For my Master's dissertation, I surveyed accredited archives within the UK for their approach to repatriation policies and procedures. I asked whether repatriation policies were in place, if they had been used before, what the respondents' concerns regarding repatriation were and offered respondents the opportunity to share additional thoughts on the topic of returning contested documents to communities outside the UK.

Archival repatriation is hotly debated and has been a contentious topic for years. In the wake of James Lowry and his collaborators' 'Displaced Archives' and 'Disputed Archival Heritage', the ethical dilemmas of holding another country's archive, and the difficult moral questions that need to be asked when repatriation is considered have been thrust into the centre of the archival field.

In this talk, I will be introducing the findings of my survey and the different policies and viewpoints archives within the UK hold. I examine the reactions and strategies suggested by these archives and lastly, I conclude this talk by arguing that we need to take a more open and honest approach to repatriation, if we want to find realistic solutions for the future.

With ARA's theme this year, I will suggest new ways of approaching repatriation and consider both the merits and flaws in the current policies and attitudes.