Archiving the Invisible, Recovering Community: A Conversation with Dr. Andrea Roberts

place preservationist, and educator whose work centers on preserving historic Black settlements, also known as Freedom Colonies.Her work challenges racial biases that impede the recognition and preservation of these communities' cultural resources by addressing the recovery of marginal histories and the ampli cation of underrepresented voices, which are central concerns for Scholarly Editing.Dr. Roberts' The Texas Freedom Colonies Project directly engages in the recovery of the histories of Black settlements, which were often marginalized and made invisible in public records.The project's work of ethically recording and safeguarding storiesincluding oral histories-and materials associated with freedom colonies directly contributes to uncovering and sustaining the cultural record.Dr. Roberts' revolutionary interactive The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas & Study serves as a repository for accessing and disseminating information on historical Black settlements integrating spatial, ethnographic, and archival data in a public-facing database and map.Readers will be especially interested in Dr. Roberts' "place preservation" framework, which embodies the spirit of community recovery that the journal encourages.Her participatory approach actively partners future planners, preservationists, scholars, and community-based researchers with descendant communities to prevent the erasure of their cultural properties and to develop resilience strategies.Additionally, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas & Study, a "prototype for a future portal" for historical Black settlement data, is a digital humanities platform that advances the recovery of underrepresented stories.