AVIVA SILVERMAN





Oral History Workshops  
Queer Legacies Project

ARCHIVING WORKSHOP WITH AMERICAN LGBTQ+ MUSEUM
FEATURED ARCHIVIST, OCTOBER 2026

Developed by the American LGBTQ+ Museum in partnership with The Feminist Institute and SAGE, Queer Legacies Project is an in-person workshop series that brings together NYC's LGBTQ+ elders to preserve their personal archives and stories. Through facilitated cataloging and digitization, the series places participants' ephemera and lived histories within the broader story of LGBTQ+ history in the U.S., helping them safeguard their materials for future generations.

As Featured Archivist, I opened the workshop with a presentation drawing on my work from 2018 to present. Participants then moved into hands-on digital archiving sessions and recorded conversations about their collections.


Learn more about the workshop here.



Oral History Workshops  
Ethical Digitization Considerations



WORKSHOP WITH ARCHIVISTS ROUNDTABLE
FACILITATOR, JUNE 2024

Developed in collaboration with ART, METRO, and The Feminist Institute, this workshop explores the ethics of digitizing personal materials and conducting oral histories. The workshop is grounded in feminist ethics of care and examines collaborative, community-centered approaches like reciprocal ethnography and participatory cataloging.

As Facilitator, I co-led the workshop alongside Allison Elliott, drawing on my work with the NYC Trans Oral History Project to guide participants through hands-on exercises on consent, access, and healing-justice-centered interviewing, building an ethical framework for grassroots, trauma-informed archival work.

Learn more about the workshop here.





Local Voices Network Group Discussion
Ethical Digitization Considerations

IN COLLABORATION WITH TOHP AND NYC DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE
FACILITATOR, 2021

In collaboration with NYC TOHP, Cortico's Local Voices Network, and the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, two virtual discussions created space for community members to listen to eachother  across their lived experiences, building new relationships, and a direct channel for community voices to reach candidates, policymakers, and media.

As a Facilitator, I helped lead both conversations, centering conversations on the health and well-being of community members as a place to draw valuable information missing from mainstream accounts.

Listen here.