Paper short abstract:

An academic archive is the by-product of research and academic life with much to show about subject areas and topics of the archive itself; public accessibility is an undisputed must, however, giving access to archival materials requires awareness and careful supervision by archive management.

Paper long abstract:

The University of Siena opened a full programme in anthropology and folklore in 1974; since then a rich store of material has accumulated from academic research and student dissertations, giving rise to the "Laboratorio/Archivio "Alberto M. Cirese". The archive stopped expanding after the university reforms of early 2000 and has survived three relocations in ten years. Its collections have become more significant with a number of early ethnographic essays by now internationally celebrated scholars, and its documentation of certain regions around the world which have undergone dramatic change over recent decades, through gentrification, climate change, or war. Beside its ongoing use for academic and didactic purposes, the archival material also acts as the memory of the studied communities, both local and distant; digital copies of its collections have been returned to local institutions or to individuals, in line with ethical principles of openness and restitution. However, the effects of returning archive materials are not always predictable. The past may be used for branding policies or may serve to nourish identity essentialism and even xenophobia, and there is the impending risk of a neo-nationalist representation of "nationhood", especially when items from the collection are perceived as having been endorsed by our archive as sanctified cultural relics. An archive must be open to returning to the public that which has been collected from the public, but this requires responsible and resolute ethical and political positions together with a sensitivity towards the possible misuses of the documented past.