Digitised Sources, Materiality and ‘Interim Archives’: Archive Encounters in Asia and the United Kingdom

Abstract In this Comment, I reflect on my personal experience in doing research at institutional archives as an early career historian. I discuss how my research has been shaped by encounters with physical and digital sources across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR and the United Kingdom. In doing so, I draw on the concept of ‘interim archives’ to emphasise the partial nature of primary sources in institutional archives, and the necessity for research to be multi-archival due not only to the realities of access, but also the need to incorporate diverse perspectives.