Luciana Duranti  

Highlights

Leading archival scholar, teacher and mentor within Canada and internationally; pioneered application of the concepts of diplomatics to modern records, particularly digital records; co-founder and Principal Investigator of the international research project on the preservation of the trustworthiness of digital records across technologies, InterPARES; SAA President (1998-1999), ACA President (2017-2018). 

Education and Background 

Born in Italy, Luciana Duranti received both a Dottore di Lettere degree (Master’s equivalent) in history (1973) and an Archivista-Paleografo degree (PhD equivalent) (1975) from the Sapienza University of Rome. She later received a Diploma in Paleography and Diplomatics from the Scuola di Archivistica, Paleografia e Diplomatica of the Archivio di Stato di Roma (1978) and a BA, Langue Francaise from the Ecole Internationale de Langue et Civilization Française, Rome (1979). 

Professional Career  

Luciana Duranti’s archival career began in Italy in 1975 as a project archivist for the Italy’s Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. In 1978 she won the national competition for Archivista di Stato at the Archivio di StatoidiinRoma, Italy. From 1979 to 1982 she also taught in the Scuola di Archivistica, Paleografia e Diplomatica of the Archivio di Stato di Roma. In 1982 she accepted the position of Ricercatore in the Professorial ranks at the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari of the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1984 she came to Canada on a two-year research grant for a project concerning North American records management practices. In 1987 she accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), University of British Columbia (UBC). There she collaborated with Terry Eastwood to expand the scope and size of the Master of Archival Studies (MAS) program. Duranti was promoted to Full Professor in 1997, served as Associate Research Dean for the Faculty of Arts (1997-1999), and as Chair of the MAS Program (1999-2005, 2006-2007, and 2008-2015. She retired from UBC in 2023 and is now a Professor Emerita on Post-Retirement Professorial Appointment for the duration of the InterPARES research project.  

Luciana Duranti has made extensive scholarly contributions, particularly during her academic career in Canada, informed by her deep knowledge of European archival history and theory and of traditional approaches to records management such as Diplomatics. She is a leading international expert on such diverse areas as the duty to document, the history of recordkeeping, digital preservation, and the application of various technologies for ensuring or verifying the authenticity of records. 

From 1993 to 1996 she directed the MAS-DOD project, which resulted in the 1997 American standard for recordkeeping, DOD 5015.2, and whose findings became the foundation of the European Standard For recordkeeping, MoReq 1 and 2. (2001 and 2004). Since 1998 Duranti has been the Principal Investigator of InterPARES, a multinational, collaborative and interdisciplinary research project on the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records, and the only project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada 5 consecutive times. InterPARES research has resulted in the identification and elaboration of a broad range of conceptual and methodological tools for assessing and protecting the trustworthiness of digital records. 

Contributions to the Profession 

Throughout her career, Duranti has actively contributed to the development of professional archival education through her membership on the education committees of the ACA, the Society of American Archivists (SAA), and the International Council on Archives (ICA). She has also served on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Advisory Committee (2007-2014) and on the Expert Panel of the Council of Canadian Academies on Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution (2013-2015). (2013-2015). She guided the development of the Master of Information, Records, and Archives Studies (MIRAS) at the Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (2020-2021). 

Duranti has not confined her participation in archival professional associations to educational matters; she has served in several committees of various professional associations, as President of both the ACA (2017-2018) and the SAA (1998-1999), as well as Co-chair of the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives. Since 2015 she has served as Chair of the Government of Canada Standard Board, National Standards of Canada CAN/CGSB-72.34 Electronic Records as Documentary Evidence. 

Honours, Awards and Recognition 

• Archivaria W. Kaye Lamb Prize, 1990 
• SAA Fellow, 1998  
• Academic of the Year Award, 1999, Canadian Universities Faculty Associations/British Columbia 
• Killam Research Prize in the Senior Category, 2005 
• Institute of Certified Records Managers’ Emmett Leahy Award (for outstanding accomplishments that have significantly advanced the records and information management professions), 2006 
• BC Innovation Council Frontiers in Research Award, 2006 
• Jacob Biely Research Prize (UBC's premier research award), 2007 
• Honorary Fellow, University of Glasgow, 2008 
• ACA Fellow, 2014 
• Member of the Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, for research merit, Padua, 2014 
• Honorary Doctorate in Science, Mid Sweden University, 2019, “for having developed theory and methods for ensuring the reliability, accuracy and authenticity of archival researchers where none existed before: InterPARES (1998-2019)”. 
• Affiliate Full Professor at the University of Washington at Seattle, 2011 onward 

Further Information 

• Rogers, Corinne. “Luciana Duranti.” In The Encyclopedia of Archival Writers, 1515-2015.Edited by Luciana Duranti and Patricia C. Franks. Lanham, ML: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. 

Photo source: https://ischool.ubc.ca/profile/luciana-duranti/  

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