Call for Proposals: Humanitarian Archive Emergency Project

Call for Proposals: Humanitarian Archive Emergency Project

25 January 2026

Up to £260,000

As part of the Humanitarian Archive Emergency Project we are seeking proposals to undertake a census of threatened humanitarian archives, records and datasets and to contribute to the development of an ethical process for strengthening the resilience of humanitarian archives and data infrastructures.

Overview

The foundations of knowledge production in the humanitarian and global health sectors are at risk. Significant recent funding cuts and new political priorities disproportionately impact humanitarian actors who collect, produce and rely on information. This impact is visible throughout funding chains around the world, yet its scale is difficult to measure accurately.

As organisations fail, or repurpose their budgets, institutional memory is threatened by the risk of disappearing archives, datasets and records. Whilst this ongoing and imminent data loss will dramatically impact future research and operational decision-making in humanitarian aid, we currently lack the means to quantify its scale and nature. The survival of data, records and archives are essential to effective aid programming and the continued function and advancement of the humanitarian system and knowledge.

We are commissioning these consultancies as part of the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust, and implemented as a consortium led by the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) at the University of Manchester.

Objective

The two consultancies, while distinct and separate, should be interlinked. As such, they could be delivered either by the same or by separate providers.

Consultancy : Conduct a census of threatened humanitarian archives, records and datasets, including an initial impact assessment with respect to losses.

This consultancy has the following objectives:

• Map and analyse the current landscape of humanitarian archives, records and datasets, assessing the extent to which they have been shaped or jeopardised by recent funding constraints, institutional reforms, and geopolitical shifts.
• Identify and interrogate the systemic and emerging vulnerabilities that threaten the preservation, accessibility, and integrity of humanitarian archival materials and data infrastructures.

Consultancy : Contribute to the development of an ethical process for strengthening the resilience of humanitarian archives and data infrastructures.

This consultancy has the following objectives:

• Develop and propose a phased roadmap and ethics-based decision-making framework to guide the rebuilding of humanitarian archival and data infrastructures.
• Within the framework, specify criteria and processes for systematic prioritisation for investment and preservation.
• Additionally, without overlooking feasibility given the current humanitarian institutional, legal and funding constraints, this work should address questions of ownership, control and accessibility, and address the risk of reproducing colonial patterns of knowledge extraction and concentration.