Natalie Cadranel

Natalie Cadranel was a Non-Resident Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab (2018-2019).

Natalie is an archivist and ethnographer working at the nexus of human rights, design, and technology. She is the Founder and Director of OpenArchive, a free, open-source tool that offers at-risk groups more agency over their sensitive mobile media. Additionally, she is a consulting archivist for the Investigations Lab at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center and DocNow and has worked extensively in the non-profit sector with a focus on preserving at-risk media, worldwide.

Using participatory research methods to collaborate closely with archivists, activists, and citizen journalists, she builds on contemporary archival theory and practice through the lens of human rights advocacy. Wedding theory and praxis, she created this mobile-to-archive preservation ecosystem, which ethically collects and preserves media captured by groups at risk of persecution and censorship. OpenArchive seeks to protect its users – and their media – from efforts to chill free speech through content takedowns, privacy breaches, and data loss, while preserving it for legacy access.

She’s written and spoken in academic and industry venues like RightsCon, National Forum on Ethics and Archiving the Web, Internet Freedom Festival, National Council on Public History, Aaron Swartz Day, Association of Moving Image Archivists, and the University of Auckland.

Natalie complements her work with a strong theoretical background, having earned a Masters of Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley’s School of Information where she focused on human computer interaction, cryptographic usability, and ethical archiving. She serves on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive.