Wherever you are at this moment, chances are that you are within easy reach of some piece of paperwork. Whether it’s a passport, a driving license, a school or university or workplace ID: these material fragments of faceless bureaucracies are critical bolsters for day-to-day living, verifying our access to resources, documenting our personal histories, in a real sense validating our claims to exist.
Today we’re telling a counter-intuitive story of paperwork, looking not its burdens, its vexing impersonality, but at its potential as a tool of empowerment for people who often find power elusive. In May 2025, a group of historians, archivists, and activists gathered at Birkbeck College London for a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Raphael Samuel History Centre titled Changing the Record. The aim was to map a hidden history of paperwork, exploring how it has served as a pathway for affirming key facts, protecting critical truths, and challenging oppression and exclusion in multiple forms.
