Please join us Tuesday, February 6, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room to hear Natalia Fernández present on the topic of “Archives and Social Justice: The Archivist as Activist.” Drawing from her professional experiences curating the Oregon State University Oregon Multicultural Archives, as well as co-founding the OSU Queer Archives, Fernández’s lecture is an exploration and reflection of what it means to be an “activist archivist” both in theory and in practice.
This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.
Please encourage your students to attend!
Sponsored by the History Department and Willamette University’s Archives and Special Collections with funding provided by Willamette’s Mellon-funded Learning By Creating initiative. 
In addition to the public lecture, Fernández will meet with students enrolled in HIST 221 (American History Workshop) to conduct an interactive workshop designed to introduce students to the methodologies of building an archive. She will speak about collaborating with local and regional communities to build partnerships utilizing non-traditional methods to ensure that historical records are preserved and remain accessible over the long term.
About the Speaker: Natalia Fernández is an associate professor and the Curator and Archivist of the Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) and the OSU Queer Archives (OSQA) at the Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center. Fernández’s mission for directing the OMA and the OSQA is to work in collaboration with Oregon’s African American, Asian American, Latino/a, Native American, and OSU’s LGBTQ+ communities to support them in preserving their histories and sharing their stories. Her scholarship relates to her work as an archivist, specifically best practices for working with communities of color. Fernández has published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Journal of Western Archives, The American Archivist, Multicultural Perspectives, and Archival Practice. Fernández holds an M.A. in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona (U of A). She graduated from the U of A Knowledge River Program, a program that focuses on community-based librarianship and partnerships with traditionally underserved communities.