Stephanie Kirk, director of the Center for the Humanities and professor of Hispanic studies, along with collaborators Paola B. Ehrmantraut (University of St. Thomas) and Ivanna Aguilera (National University of Córdoba), has been awarded a $25,000 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant to support a pilot project that will create a bilingual digital archive documenting transfeminist activism in Córdoba, Argentina.

The project brings together U.S.-based feminist scholars and Argentine activists, scholars and community organizations to preserve materials related to 21st-century transfeminist movements while developing a new model for ethical, community-centered digital archiving. The archive will serve as both a platform for collective memory and a tool for strengthening trans and gender-dissident communities whose histories are often marginalized or erased.

Built using Mukurtu CMS, an open-source platform designed for community stewardship of digital heritage, the archive will house materials including zines, photographs, videos, oral testimonies, manifestos, artwork and social media content. Contributors will retain control over how materials are shared, described and accessed, allowing the archive to reflect community-defined ethical and safety practices.

“This digital archive is designed not only to safeguard their materials but to place stakeholders at the center of all decision-making,” Kirk said. “Those most affected by violence and marginalization must be the narrators of their own histories.”

The initiative builds on a broader international collaboration among Kirk, Ehrmantraut and Aguilera launched in 2024 to document gender activism and foster an exchange of feminist knowledge from the Global South to the North. Aguilera — who leads the Trans, Travesti, and Non-Binary Area at the National University of Córdoba’s Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities and is herself an advocate for trans human rights and survivor of state terrorism — will serve as the project’s on-site manager in Córdoba.

With the help of Córdoba-based partner Flores Diversas, the team will offer archival training workshops that equip local community members with digital preservation skills and support long-term stewardship of the archive.

“Training workshops will offer conceptual grounding in documentation, memory work and archival ethics,” said Ehrmantraut, who earned her doctorate from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at WashU. “This creates a cross-sector learning network that strengthens both local and global conversations on transfeminist digital methodologies.”

In addition to developing the platform, the project will produce community-defined archival guidelines, training materials and documentation outlining best practices for participatory digital preservation. Organizers hope the initiative will serve as a model for future justice-oriented archival projects in Latin America and beyond.

The project also draws on support from WashU Libraries, including Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945–1992 co-director and Curator of Local History Miranda Rectenwald, and the university’s Data Services team.

“This project answers a real need in our communities,” Aguilera said. “Many trans and travesti activists produce important knowledge through daily organizing, but it is often fragile, easily lost or taken without proper credit. The digital archive provides a different path: a space where our histories and practices can be kept safe, explained in our own words and managed by the people who create them.”