ASRA 2025 Conference
Reflections on “Deadline 2025”
The Past, Present, and Future
Sydney, Gadigal Country and online
30-31 October 2025
Registrations Closed
Conference Dinner: A$75
All staff from our Institutional members are entitled to members rates.
For Institutional registrations requiring an invoice please contact Treasurer@asra.asn.au
ASRA membership offers many benefits, including access to the ASRA community and access to ASRA’s journal, the Australasian Sound Archive. You can become a member or renew your membership during the conference registration process to be eligible for the member rate.
In 2015, the National Film & Sound Archive report ‘Deadline 2025: Collections at Risk’ issued an urgent call to action: to digitise and preserve at-risk audio recordings on magnetic tape before deterioration and obsolescence rendered them irretrievable. This was echoed by the UNESCO/IASA ‘Magnetic Tape Alert Project’ report.
Now that 2025 is here, where do we stand? What lessons have been learned? What stories can we share? And most importantly, what comes next?
The Venue
We are most grateful to our conference partner the SAE University College for providing us with access to their amazing Sydney Campus as conference venue.
Conference Dinner
Our conference dinner will be held on Thursday night at The Blackbird Cafe, located in nearby Cockle Bay. Dinner will be a three-course set menu with dietary options available. The conference dinner is not included in the cost of registration. See our web store to purchase your seat at the conference dinner.
Conference Program Overview
Click here for detailed Abstracts and Presenter details
Day 1 – Thursday, 30 October 2025
8:30 – Registration desk open
9:15 – Conference opening and Presidents welcome
9:30 – Recovering the Unrecoverable – Panel
Dr Sebastian Gliga (Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland)
Play it again – Recovering analog audio from degraded tapes using synchrotron X-rays
Peter Alyea (United States Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA)
IRENE: Analyzing Images to Digitize Sound on Historic Audio RecordingsGabriele Franzoso (Swiss National Sound Archives, Lugano, Switzerland)
Retrieving lost sounds: Restoring information from defective Analog and Digital tapes
Chair: Mick Newnham
Morning Tea
11:00 – Dr Virginia Madsen (ASRA member, Academic Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University)
Between asylum and abyss: Artaud, the ABC and the return of the repressed archive?
11:30 – Pete Kolomitsev (State Records of South Australia)
Who doesn’t love a deadline?
12:00 – Jeff Brownrigg (Australian Studies Institute, ANU)
‘Stone Tapes’… and the Endurance of Voices, Visions and Spirits
Lunch
13:30 – The State of Sound Archives in State Libraries 2025 – Panel
Andrea Hensing-Matto, SLSA
Damien Cassidy, SLNSW
Farah Kabbani, SLWA
Alexander Laird, Tasmanian Archives and Special Collections, Libraries Tasmania
Swee Cheng Wong, SLQ
Katie Flack, SLV
Afternoon Tea
15:00 – Rahnee Alvarez (ABC Archives)
Shaping a Sustainable Path Beyond the Mass Digitisation Push
15:30 – Cynthia Wu & Joshua Ng (National Library of New Zealand)
Utaina: Preserving Voices, Connecting Communities
16:00 – Craig Field (National Archive of Australia)
Beyond the Deadline: Repairing, Rebuilding, and Reimagining Analogue Audio Preservation
Evening – Conference Dinner at Blackbird Cafe, Cockle Bay.
Day 2 – Friday, 31 October 2025
9:15 – Damien Cassidy (ASRA): Welcome + housekeeping
9:30 – Dan Figurelli (Indiana University Library, USA)
Preserving Audio at Indiana University
10:00 – Kailen Sallander (BAVC Media, San Francisco, USA)
Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape
Morning Tea
11:15 – Dr Hamish Sewell (soundtrails.com.au):
Soundtrails: the shared authority and power of locative audio
11:45 – Danny Roberts & Joshua Sellick (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia)
Training challenges and successes in Audio Services
12:15 – Janelle Mikkelsen & Lydia Sands-Lat (ABC Archives)
From Airwaves to Archives
Lunch
13:30 – ABC Archives Facility Tours
14:15 – Keynote Address – Kevin Bradley
“The Journey, or the Destination”
Afternoon Tea
15:20 – ASRA Awards Presentations
15:35 – The Alice Moyle Lecture - Gillian Moody, NFSA
16:30 – Conference close
For further information please contact us
Find information on past conferences click here.