Silvia Riva

Researcher in residence at the Maison Suger from October to November 2026

Silvia Riva is Professor of French and Francophone Literature at the University of Milan, where she directs the research center Acutes – Africa: Cultures, Territories, Histories. A specialist in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, her research focuses on Sub-Saharan African and Black diasporic literatures, with particular interests in decolonial ecopoetics and the memory of genocides. She also works on contemporary French poetry and its interactions with the visual arts and dance, as well as on transnational approaches within the field of World Literature studies. In addition, she investigates the impact of cultural bias in the use of artificial intelligence and the obsolescence of digital sources.

The project

Title: Toward a Federated Framework for Preserving the Digital Heritage of Francophone Literatures

"This project aims to design a federated, community-driven framework for safeguarding the digital archives of Francophone literatures, which are currently facing an acute preservation crisis, with 38% of web content already lost as early as 2013. The initiative adopts an innovative approach that departs from existing centralized models, such as the Wayback Machine, by proposing an ecosystem of distributed repositories, collaborative governance structures, and ethical and legal guidelines, with particular attention to marginalized cultural communities. The project's preparatory phase includes a critical inventory of existing digital archives held at ITEM, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and the École nationale des Chartes. It also involves building an active network of researchers, archivists, and institutional stakeholders, as well as identifying early-career scholars whose expertise in the digital humanities could contribute to the development and long-term vitality of the network."

Hosting institution: Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM) - École Normale Supérieure (ENS)