ASRA 2025 Conference

Reflections on “Deadline 2025”

The Past, Present, and Future

Sydney, Gadigal Country and online

30-31 October 2025


Registrations now open

Join us onsite or on-line

ASRA Members:

Onsite A$115

Online A$25

Non- Members:

Onsite A$165

Online A$55

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.

Click here to register

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. 

blackbirdcafe.com.au 

Click here for Abstracts and Presenter info.
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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 Recordings

  • Gabriele 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

  • 13:30The 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 Chen Wong, SLQ 

  • Katie Flack, SLV

Afternoon Tea

  • 15:00 – Rahnee Alvarez (ABC Archives) 
    Shaping a Sustainable Path Beyond the Mass Digitisation Push

  • 3:30 – 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 

  • 9:30Dan 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 +1 (ABC Archives) 
    [From Airwaves to Archives - title tbc]

Lunch

  • 13:30 – ABC and SAE 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.

ASRA 2025 Conference Registration
from A$25.00
ASRA 2025 Conference Dinner
A$75.00
  • 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.

ASRA Membership 2025/26
from A$30.00