Tonia Sutherland
Biography
Tonia Sutherland is an American scholar, author, archivist, and information scientist whose research explores the intersections of race, technology, archives, and digital memory. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, she has built an interdisciplinary career examining how information systems, digital platforms, and archival institutions influence the preservation and interpretation of Black histories. Her professional career has included significant academic appointments in New York and California, and she currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where her teaching and research focus on archival studies, digital cultures, community memory, and information justice.
Her scholarship investigates how digital technologies continue to shape cultural memory, particularly for Black communities whose histories have often been marginalized or erased. Sutherland is the author of Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife, a book examining how Black identity persists, is represented, and is contested in digital spaces after death. She has also contributed extensively to archival theory, digital humanities, and information science through scholarly articles, public lectures, and collaborative research.
Beyond her published scholarship, Sutherland has developed and led projects dedicated to preserving Black memory and expanding community-centered archival practice, including the Community Archives Lab at UCLA and The Black Memory Collective, where she serves as Founder and Director. She also contributes to collaborative initiatives such as Archives for Black Lives (A4BL) and Black Memory Workers, advancing equitable archival practice and the preservation of Black histories. Through research, teaching, and public scholarship, she continues to advocate for more inclusive approaches to information stewardship while encouraging critical engagement with race, technology, and historical preservation.
BQW Impact
Tonia Sutherland has become a leading voice in reimagining how archives, technology, and information systems can better preserve and honor Black lives. By examining the relationships between digital media, cultural memory, and racial justice, she has expanded conversations about who is remembered, how histories are documented, and whose stories remain visible within institutional archives.
As a Black queer scholar, Sutherland has also helped shape contemporary archival practice through community-centered research and public scholarship. Her work continues to influence librarians, archivists, educators, technologists, and cultural institutions seeking more inclusive and equitable approaches to preserving Black history and lived experience.
Notable Works
Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife (2023)
Book examining Black memory, digital afterlives, archival practices, and the ways technology shapes the preservation and remembrance of Black lives.
Archival Amnesty: In Search of Black American Transitional and Restorative Justice (2017)
Research examining Black archival practices through questions of memory, justice, and the possibilities of restorative approaches to archives.
Making a Killing: On Race, Ritual, and (Re)membering in Digital Culture (2017)
Examines race, ritual, memory, and digital culture through the ways Black lives and histories are represented and remembered digitally.
Reading Gesture: Katherine Dunham, the Dunham Technique, and the Vocabulary of Dance as Decolonizing Archival Praxis (2019)
Examines Katherine Dunham's dance vocabulary as an archival and decolonizing practice, connecting movement, memory, and Black cultural history.
Witnessing, Testimony, and Transformation as Genres of Black Archival Practice (2022)
Examines witnessing and testimony as forms of Black archival practice.