Greg Bak 

Highlights

Archival scholar, educator, and advocate, specializing in the current practice and history of digital archives, and archival decolonization; helped establish the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba.  

Education and Background  

Raised in Peterborough, Ontario by parents displaced and dispossessed from Poland during the Second World War, Greg Bak received a BA (1991) and an MA (1993) in History at the University of Toronto. He went on to an MLIS (2000) and a PhD in History (2001) from Dalhousie University. From his doctoral dissertation he published the book Barbary   Pirate: The Life and Crimes of Captain John Ward (Sutton, 2006; History Press, 2008). 

Professional Career  

Over the course of a decade Greg Bak worked in various library, digital information management, and digital archiving positions, including with the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, the HIV/AIDS Affiliate of the Canadian Health Network, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. He joined Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in 2007 as a health portfolio archivist but soon moved to a special digital unit. At LAC he became a senior digital archivist and acting manager for the Government Records Digital Office. He contributed to the development of LAC TDR, particularly as the business lead for archival metadata; he has written about this experience in several publications. 

In 2011, Bak joined the Department of History in the University of Manitoba’s Archival Studies program as an assistant professor, bringing digital archival expertise to the program and to the committee writing the university’s bid to host the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR); in 2015 the three Commissioners of the TRC selected the University of Manitoba to host the NCTR. In 2018 Bak became the University of Manitoba Archival Studies program’s leader and sole full-time professor, supervising both master’s and doctoral students. In this role he became a recognized educator and mentor in the Canadian archival field, promoted to professor in 2025. In her nomination letter to the ACA Awards Committee Shelley Sweeney writes that Bak “approaches each task with dedication and extraordinary enthusiasm as well as patience, sympathy, and understanding for his students.” Bak initiated undergraduate courses on archival and heritage studies, and the histories of digital cultures, thereby encouraging a new and wider audience for the archival field and contributing to greater public understanding of contemporary archival issues.  

In 2022 Bak held a residency at Aalbourg University’s Department of Politics and Society in Denmark as well as a residency at the Centre for Digital History Aarhus (CEDAR) at Aarhus University. His work with his Danish colleagues led to co-editing The Nordic Model of Digital Archiving (Routledge, 2024), including his chapter comparing the histories of Canadian and Danish digital archiving.  

Contributions to the Profession  

Bak’s scholarly research contributes significantly to the Canadian archival studies canon; of particular value is his theorization of digital archiving. He has published on the theory, practice, and history of digital archiving, decolonization, ethics, appraisal, description, and community archives in Archivaria, Archival Science, The American Archivist and other archival studies, information studies, and history journals. He co-edited (with Tom Nesmith and Joan Schwartz, both ACA Fellows) All Shook Up: The Archival Legacy of Terry Cook, (Society of American Archivists, 2020). He was a member of the Royal Society of Canada working group that produced the report “Remembering is a Form of Honouring: Preserving the COVID-19 Archival Record” (2021).  

An active volunteer in the archival community, Bak has served on the ACA conference Program Committees (2013 and 2018), the editorial board of Archivaria(2014-2019), the Strategic Planning Task Force (2018-2019), and the Education Committee (2017-2022). As a member of the Association of Manitoba Archives, Bak has served on its Education Committee, Advocacy Committee’s Subcommittee on the City of Winnipeg’s Indigenous Accord, and the New Home for the City of Winnipeg Archives Committee (2015-2023).  

Bak has been energetic and effective in the areas of archival advocacy and outreach through research reports, blogs, community publications, and volunteerism that has included serving on the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre’s Expert Advisory Board on Archives (2013-2015), the Mennonite Heritage Centre’s Archives Reference Committee (2014-2017) and the Archives Committee of the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation (2023-present). 

Honours, Awards and Recognition  

• ACA Fellow, 2023  
• ACA Larry Dohey Award, 2023 (awarded as a member of the New Home for the City of Winnipeg Archives Committee) 

Further Information  

• University of Manitoba Faculty Profile page: https://umanitoba.ca/arts/greg-bak  

Photo source: Photo taken by Grace Sheppard (ACA files)

If you see any inaccuracies or information gaps in any biography, the ACA would very much welcome your input. Please send a message to the current chair of the Nominations and Awards Committee.