Uncovering Diversity Within State Archives: In Conversation With Vicky Iglikowski-Broad

Ila Manish and Emmanuel Adeyemi-Abere │ Lancaster University

EPOCH Editors Ila Manish and Emmanuel Adeyemi-Abere interview Victoria Iglikowski-Broad, Diverse Histories Records Specialist from The National Archives (TNA), London, to understand the role of archives in visibilising and publicising ‘hidden’ or diverse histories.

Victoria Iglikowski-Broad, Diverse Histories Records Specialist at The National Archives. (Credit: Victoria Iglikowski-Broad/The National Archives).

Ila: Hello! So the things that bring the three of us together in some ways are archival records. Emmanuel and I are both historians, a lot of EPOCH’s readers are historians as well. I wanted to ask you what is an archivist's relationship to the records? How is it different from a historian's relationship?

Vicky: So I'm not a trained archivist. The National Archives is a big organization — we have 550-600 staff, so the conventional roles in archives get divided out. Whereas one small archive service might have three people, if they're lucky, that will do bits of everything, here, our roles are more spread out. Some people in my department are trained archivists but you don't have to be to do the work that I do. I'm in a department called Collections Expertise and Engagement that's more about understanding the content of the records and what's held within the records, rather than the traditional archival activities of organising and cataloguing. We do work on elements of that if it's relevant to our roles — some people do volunteer projects or cataloguing projects — but we instigate it from a historical view of the record. So, in that way, maybe we have more in common with some of what you do and what your readership does as well.

We all have different specialisms. My specialism is diversity. I'm Principal Diverse History Records Specialist, which is a role that doesn't necessarily map onto other institutions or heritage organisations. It's quite bespoke, but it means having knowledge of the collections in that area, and finding ways to engage people in that material. In practice, I end up doing a lot of events, curation, community and outreach stuff. We have an outreach department, but they're very small. So I might go ahead and do my own things or I might work with them, or work with our education team as well. So yeah, there's a degree of researching the collections, trying to make them more accessible where possible, engaging people with them, and raising awareness by putting content on the website. Other colleagues also do more cataloguing to help make things more accessible.

So yeah, I have got a quite archival mindset because I work within the archives of government. I'm very much thinking within that framework and sometimes trying to work around that framework and the restrictions of the material we have and the limits of what they can tell us. But equally, I'm often looking for stories in the records. That's a big part of what I do.

Emmanuel: This is really interesting because one of the things I did during my Master’s was work with the university to give talks at various events to some students who were interested in studying history. I spoke to them about some of my research and going off into archives, talking to them about how there are all these different histories you can explore. Just to give them a bit of an impression that you can go and do things that are off the beaten track. I'd be really interested to know a bit more about what your experience has been and perhaps what your team's experiences have been of working with educational institutions, and to what degree they maybe help or don't help with some of these challenges that we have in getting the archives out there and getting people interested in these hidden histories, given how much of a role schools and universities play in informing people about what history can be about.

Vicky: Yeah, I don't work too directly with schools myself. I tend to work with our education team who then handles the more direct content. I work with them to create sessions and we do live broadcasts and stuff like that to try and maximise the reach of what we do.

There is a challenge in terms of the diversity of content we have. Part of the problem, is how busy teachers are and the restrictions of the curriculum. Because they're busy, they tend to really strongly lean on the things that are important for exams. So we do find a bit of a challenge in trying to get the diversity of stories out there. We always have to think about hooks in the curriculum. So for example, we did something on LGBT history, but the way we could do it was to link it to crime and punishment. That's not a great positive link into LGBT history but once we had that link, we could unpack it: yes, there was criminalization, but there was also potential and possibility and underground communities creating space. So you can still do things like that but it’s difficult. A lot of it does come down to the capacity of teachers to take on extra things, which are inclusion-focused. And that's a shame. So we always think very carefully about how we can package things for schools.

Increasingly, we've done things in different formats for schools, like things that can be done in assemblies. Where there isn't the classroom focus, we're finding that tends to work better or get a bit more uptake. We also try to embed inclusion in all our education-focussed work. But we can put out as much inclusive content as we want, if it doesn't meet the school’s needs, we have to then reevaluate and think about how we can package this in a way that's going to fit into teachers’ timetables or link to the curriculum in a way that they can use. It's difficult because sometimes you desperately want to represent these unrepresented things and there isn't an obvious link. But I think over time we've seen that if we don't find a link, the content we put out doesn’t get as much of an uptake, which is a shame because these histories then don't get out there.

Emmanuel: I think for me when I came into uni, I never personally really cared for a lot of things that were on the curricula. I was just interested in researching things that related to experiences that I had and experiences that other people I knew had. Whether that was representative of the wider demographic of people I was around or not, that didn't really matter because it was important to me. But trying to project that back into other educational communities where that interest wasn't necessarily there, those sorts of things could be more of a challenge. I definitely found there was a bit of a challenge with discussing things with certain teachers in school, because they had certain things that they had to do and students they had to cater towards. Now I've got my own little PhD, which I'm happy with and I enjoy. And that's great for me and for the groups of people that I speak to. But I've not necessarily thought about how I can make this relevant and interesting and something that loads of other people want to take up.

Ila: I think the weird thing about a PhD is how closed off it is. The reason I thought about doing this interview with you was because I came for the queer Love Letters exhibition at The National Archives. It was fascinating because there were key ‘academic arguments’ being made there, which I could have equally well just read as a journal article. But that would be something that's only interesting to me because I work in academia and enjoy that kind of research. The exhibition was so much more accessible a form, interesting even for a high school student. But at the same time, histories of queerness, colonisation, race, these are things that are becoming increasingly contested or controversial, and The National Archives is, at the end of the day, a state institution. It struck me as I was there that I was seeing these histories of queerness in a state institution, as the same state actively cracked down on queerness in other forms. And then if you're talking about introducing it to educational spaces and school spaces, that becomes a conversation of its own, because parents are going to have opinions and teachers are going to have opinions. So how do you navigate this?

The entrance to Love Letters, an exhibition curated at The National Archives in London from 24 January to 12 April 2026. (Credit: Victoria Iglikowski-Broad/The National Archives).

Vicky: Yeah, there are lots of challenges and tensions in the archive. My job is to look for those inclusive voices. So I try as much as possible to surface those voices, share them fairly and ethically, and, where possible, let the documents do the talking. I feel like if that history is present, it's present. Other people can politicise it or be impacted in whatever way. But for me, my role is to surface those stories, to find them, and try and make them accessible. And so that's what I'm going to do. We are civil servants and these are stories that exist in our archive. And that's just factual and true, which is the real strength of archives: they show the visibility of people historically. There's some legwork to find the items and stuff, but once you've found them, they're there and then it's our duty to share them. It's definitely challenging but I just see it as my duty and my job to do that and to surface it.

The bigger challenge, in a way, for me, is how to share some of those stories that have very sensitive, difficult histories within the documents. For example, a record that might show trans lives vibrantly and visibly from 200 years ago, might also be a policing document. How do you rectify that when you're sharing that with audiences? You're trying to share this history for positive reasons, but it comes from a negative context. I find that quite challenging, but also rewarding, because seeing how people respond to the archival visibility of people that they identify with is really powerful. We saw that really strongly in the Love Letters exhibition, in the way people responded. There were lots of comments about queer visibility and people feeling affirmed and saying, ‘I saw myself represented in a document from 100 years ago.’ To me, that's why I do my job. So that was really satisfying and really rewarding. There were complexities with it for sure. But in a way, my job is to surface the records, and to try and then treat those histories fairly and ethically.

Making them accessible to people is an aim and we can do academic research here but the thing I enjoy more is getting more people to see the records and to access these stories. I try to find ways to engage the general public and make archive documents appealing to people who might not think archives are for them.

The letter-writing space at the end of the Love Letters exhibition, where people were asked to respond with letters of their own to those they loved or in response to the letters other people had left behind. (Credit: Victoria Iglikowski-Broad/The National Archives).

Ila: Yeah, I think it is important because the responses that that you'd asked for people to write down were also really touching to just go through and see how many people were moved by these things that otherwise you only find if you're spending months researching there.

Vicky: Yeah, exactly! It was a culmination of decades of research in many ways — it’s taken years and years to surface the items that I curated, which tended to relate mainly to sexuality and gender identity. But once you've found them, I think you definitely have a duty to share them. Seeing the impact on people was really important and we didn't anticipate the level of response we got. We invited people to write their own letters and around 2,400 people did and left them there in only about twelve weeks.

One of our aims when we set out with the exhibition was to see if we could gauge whether people were emotionally impacted by archives and if the exhibition could get them in a mindset to feel more in touch with their emotions. And I think the letters at the end showed that people did do that — the comment cards and letters, lots of them reflected people's sense of identity. Some people wrote in their home language, they spoke about migration, and how they'd been accepted. Some people wrote letters to London. So that's what they were thinking about when they were in the exhibition. Lots of people expressed queer identities; they came as couples and wrote together. So there was a sense of people feeling quite accepted in the space. I think that's what archival visibility and being inclusive in the stories you share can help people feel.

Emmanuel: I want to think more about this idea of having an archive and presenting things to publics and audiences. Thinking of my own work, if you're performing something for an audience, the audience isn't something that's constituted until it's actually there. And yet you're kind of trying to create something working towards or speaking towards a group of people. There’s multiple levels that you need to keep in mind — the institution that you're representing, the wider context of what's happening in the country in mind, and the people that you're communicating to. I’m wondering, has that process changed for you over time? Are there any lessons that you've learned, particularly from engaging with people that have shaped how you think about this process of curation?

Vicky: It's tricky curating for audiences that you don't yet know or can't fully picture. We're a national institution and so our reach is potentially huge, but also not everyoneis already engaged in archives. A lot of people still think of them as places that you can only go if you're a researcher. So there are barriers there. But I think you can curate the audience you want a little bit. So knowing that the theme was love, we knew the tone that we wanted in the space. And that led us to the audience. I think curating with inclusive content in mind can help reach a certain demographic of people, for example, younger people. Our Love Letters exhibition massively reached a younger audience. I think being inclusive helped with that. That was pushed through our marketing so people knew. A lot of it was really popular on TikTok — audience members would share how inclusive the content was. All of that brought in a younger audience. So I think you can shape content to the audience you'd like to reach, which, for us, was certainly a younger demographic or audiences that we don't normally reach as much. I certainly was quite nervous about any backlash about inclusive content, queer content, but there was actually very little of that, which I think shows how curating something a certain way can hopefully get it out to the audience that you want it to get to.

It is a delicate balance to curate queer histories, colonial histories, or histories that are really nuanced, really sensitive. You often have teeny captions with which you have to get the complexity across and that's really difficult. I've been doing it about 12 years in different roles and overwhelmingly, people are just pleased to see themselves or their histories represented. So, I'm affirmed that it's the right thing to do to share these histories, even if they're challenging or difficult.

Where possible, I curate with people, but that's not always possible because you want to pay people fairly for their time and if we don't have money, then I'd rather not get free labour from people. We were able to do a bit of curation with our own LGBTQ+ staff network and it’s worth doing this work sensitively and carefully and taking the time because of the meaning that it has for people.

The other thing, which I think is why Love Letters has worked quite well, is that finding person-centred stories really works, especially finding people’s own words. We're a government archive so that's not always a strength of ours, but because we have 40 million records and 1000 years of history, even if it's not a strength, they're in there somewhere. And so you can offset the voice of the state a little bit by bringing out and highlighting those individual personal stories.

Ila: When we talk about working with communities, often the way communities remember their histories is not through archival records. It's other kinds of sources, but I think records can be used to complement these alternative sources. Have you ever worked with communities in that sense, through oral histories or other kinds of collective memory?

Vicky: What we're more likely to do is work with partner organisations to do that kind of thing. As an archive of government, our remit is absolutely only to take in government records. Things like oral histories don't really work for us. We wouldn't be able to protect and look after them in the long term. So what we tend to do is work with a partner that can do that. I haven't done that much of it myself but I'd like to do more. I have done much more informal projects, like creative writing sessions in response to the archival material. I'd like to do more with oral histories and directly linking them to government records because you do need a counterpoint to the government records. They tell a very particular story. If you can unite that with people’s lived experiences, that's really important.

          For example, we worked with the Black Cultural Archives to tell the story of the Mangrove Nine. We brought our government records and united them with community records, photographs, those kinds of things, and then that's more powerful. I was quite surprised about the strength of our records, which also had quite a lot of community voices because literature from campaigners and things like that were being seized by the state. And so actually we had more of a community presence and voice than I would have expected in that case. We also had really powerful photographs of campaigners.

But it's really important to be conscious of the limits of the state records and work with other collections where possible. I haven't done that personally in terms of oral histories but I've tended to do it in smaller ways. I'd love to do it in bigger ways, but it's basically all funding related. If opportunities come up, I think it would be brilliant. The only thing is that there's an overwhelming amount of information here and stories that need to be told and you're constantly juggling. If you do a big project on one thing, it takes you away from all these other things. So I tend to try and do little bits on lots of things, but, it’s certainly a valuable approach.

Emmanuel: Yeah, I think with oral histories and The National Archives, there’s also a risk of institutionalisation and stories being suppressed. But it doesn't necessarily mean that different forms of recording and preserving history have to exist in opposition to each other. They can complement each other. It's just there's a logistical element to it, there's a financial element to it, and there's a practical element to it.

Vicky: Absolutely!

Emmanuel: You’ve highlighted some of the things in your role that make it more or less difficult to do certain sorts of things. Is there a challenge within your place of work, within different departments, and different people wanting to do different things? How do you negotiate that?

Vicky: Definitely! I think smaller archives are often quite under-resourced, but they can also be a lot more agile to products and things like that, whereas we have a lot of structure, as you'd imagine, as a part of government. We have lots of procedures to follow and things like that. Compared to most archives, we’re very well-funded, but there's also a lot of functions to cover with that funding. So there's not always pots of priority money for some of these things. There's a lot of advocating for the particular area you're interested in. Sometimes we lean into things like history months, which can be challenging and problematic: these histories should be talked about all the time. But equally, it can often give a bit of visibility to something and help structure what we're doing.

It's brilliant that we've got someone like me doing diversity and that's a role but that's still one person handling a vast collection. We have other colleagues that work more on colonial records. So there are multiple of us, but also a lot of records to wrangle. So there are definitely challenges to doing these things. But sometimes opportunities come up where an exhibition lends itself to lots of different voices being presented. Those decisions about exhibitions, for example, are made much higher up the organisation. So I might be able to suggest things, but I'm not a decision maker. Definitely, I think some other organisations are a bit more flexible.

Ila: Speaking of other organisations, this may not be specifically relevant to your role, but are there collaborative projects across archives with TNA? Because university collections often complement the state archives quite well. Or even overseas — colonial records and transatlantic trade records are often divided and distributed across the world. How might navigating that work from an accessible history perspective?

Vicky: In terms of England and Wales, we're the lead for the archive sector. So we work quite closely with lots of different archives. We have a whole team that are designed go out and try and look after those archives and work with them. We have various funding streams to try and support archives with cataloguing grants and innovation grants. We might have collaborative projects where it's topically relevant or if there's a particular strength in a certain collection.

My colleagues, Liz and Chloe, work a lot more with overseas archives and colonial records. They try to see how we can communicate better to make sure that there's more understanding about what's held where, what might be held more locally, how different collections complement each other, and also what hasn’t survived?

I think sometimes people assume that a state archive holds everything, but we're just one of many, many archives. And so we work together depending on the situation. It might be a collaboration, it might be knowledge sharing, but ultimately the aim is to help more people understand what different archives hold.

Emmanuel: Before we end, I wanted to ask one last question. I've been to four different archives now over the years. There’s a love that I've found in going around the archives and digging out random things and seeing how the jigsaw fits together. There’s something very intuitive and creative about that, which I enjoy as a process. There's a labour of love around the archive, which I really enjoy. If there's one thing about archives — it could be to do with your job or just archives in general — that really makes it a thing that you love, what would it be?

Vicky: I'm kind of inclined to say something similar to you. It’s very rewarding and satisfying. You put in a lot of labour and legwork. It's not necessarily easy to do, but it's part of the process, it’s important. And then when you do find something, it feels like magic. I love stumbling across things that you wouldn't have thought to look for. Through that process of rummaging, as it were, you can uncover things you would never have thought to find. I love the archival chase and hunt and the journey that you go on. A lot of people, I think, get frustrated with archives. They want them to be like Google whereas actually the satisfaction comes from the journey.

The other thing I love about my job is seeing people interact with documents. I like meeting people with the material and changing their mind about archives or making them think about differently about archives. To me, that interaction with the public is really important as well.

Ila: Yeah, I think the most exciting thing about the archives is the possibilities. There's always a sense of possibility when you enter an archive, however long you've been there. I was in Kerala for three months in different archives. Every day, in the morning, I wouldn’t be particularly excited about one more day of archiving, but then by the time I’d actually get in there, that would change. I’d be saying to myself, ‘today could be the day that you find the most exciting thing you've ever discovered!’

Vicky: Yeah, exactly!

Ila: I’ve really enjoyed this! Thank you so much for making time for this discussion!

Emmanuel: Yeah, thank you, this has been really great!

Vicky: No worries, good luck with both your studies!

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Victoria Iglikowski-Broad is the Diverse Histories Records Specialist at The National Archives in London. Her role allows her to delve into the under explored and traditionally marginalised histories in the archives. Her background is women and gender history. She tends to work on twentieth-century queer history, protest movements, Black British civil rights struggles and women’s history. Vicky likes to find creative and different ways for people to engage with archive material. She works in the Modern Britain research team, to enhance access and increase awareness of our records in order to open up the full inclusive potential of The National Archives collections.