Archive/Counter-Archive Welcomes Erika Biddle, our new Knowledge Mobilization Officer!

Erika Biddle is a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow at York University, working with Archive/Counter-Archive and PUBLIC. She received her PhD in Communication and Culture from York University, where her dissertation, “Plastic Publics,” examined historical uses of “neuroplastic power” in shaping modern publics. Since January 2024, Erika has been collaborating with PUBLIC to produce Arcana, a special project led by artist Christine Davis with four contemporary artists and librarians at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (University of Toronto), culminating in a limited-edition multiple of four artists’ books. She is also developing PUBLIC Online as a broader platform for PUBLIC’s work. Erika is senior editor at Common Notions press and co-editor of Constituent Imagination with David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis. She is currently working on a book based on her doctoral research.

A Message from Erika

I am thrilled to join the A/CA team as the new Knowledge Mobilization Officer, working at a threshold of this incredible long-running project on A/CA Kmb events, special projects and publications, an issue of PUBLIC reflecting on GAVA, and new directions for PUBLIC Online. I am deeply grateful to Andrew Bailey, the project's long-standing KMO, and A/CA's Project Manager Antoine Damiens, for their generous support in getting me on board. I am also grateful to Janine Marchessault and Michael Zryd for inviting me to join such an incredible project.

I look forward to working with this team, including KMO Research Assistant Dhvani Ramanujam, and with the A/CA network. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me (kmo@counterarchive.ca) with any questions or A/CA-related news you think would be worth mobilizing!

An Outgoing Message from Andrew 

Dear A/CA Network,

It has been such an enjoyable and productive experience working with you all over the past couple of years during my tenure as A/CA's Knowledge Mobilization Officer. I learned so much from watching all of your incredible projects come to fruition and I am really excited to have had the opportunity to become connected to such an impressive network of folks. You are all so passionate and inspiring and I will be looking to you all as positive examples during the next stage of my career as a SSHRC postdoc.

I also can't thank Janine, Mike, Antoine, Emily, Dhvani, JP, and Nick for so consistently providing me with such a supportive, generous, and warm community of coworkers. I have learned so much from all of you and am so grateful for the time I spent working alongside you all at A/CA.

Please do not hesitate to stay in touch. There is a growing crowd of academics over at Bluesky (@andrewrbailey.bsky.social), so please say hi to me there if you have an account. And you can also reach me over email (abailey@ocadu.ca).

Best wishes and hopefully see you again soon!

Andrew