Heather MacNeil  

Highlights

Influential academic, educator and thinker at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the University of Toronto, and internationally; one of the founders of the International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA); leading archival writer and editor who has contributed both skills to ACA’s journal Archivaria. 

Education and Background 

Born in Hamilton, Heather MacNeil received a BA in English Literature from the University of Guelph (1980), an MA in English from Simon Fraser University (1984), a Master of Archival Studies (MAS) from UBC (1987), and after working in the field for a few years, a PhD in interdisciplinary studies (law, history, and archival studies), also at UBC (1999). 

Professional Career 

After graduating from the MAS Program, Heather MacNeil served as an archivist at the University of Toronto Archives and the National Archives of Canada (BC region) (1992-1995)and was also Project Coordinator for the Bureau of Canadian Archivists’ Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards (BCA-PCDS, 1988-1992).Following the completion of her doctoral degree, she joined the faculty of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) at UBC, chairing its Master of Archival Studies Program from 2005 to 2008. In 2008 she left UBC to join the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. A leading archival scholar, MacNeil has published articles covering a range of archival topics, among them, archival theory and history, privacy, descriptive standards, and the trustworthiness of records in traditional and digital record-keeping environments.  

Contributions to the Profession 

Heather MacNeil has served on the Editorial Board of Archivaria (General Editor 2014-2015) and on several ACA committees, most notably the Ad Hoc Ethics Committee which developed the association’s first Code of Ethics. She represented the ACA on the BCA-PCDS Textual Records and Subject Indexing working groups, chaired the Program Committee for the 1992 ACA Annual Conference (focused on descriptive standards), and was co-organizer of the Canadian Council of Archives Invitational Meeting of Experts on Arrangement (2004). She has also served on the Publications Board of the Society of American Archivists. MacNeil co-founded the International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA) in 2003, along with Barbara Craig and Philip Eppard. 

Honours, Awards and Recognition 

• Archivaria W. Kaye Lamb Prize, 2004 and 2024 
• UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies Distinguished Alumna award, 1996  
• Archivaria Hugh Taylor Prize, 2010 
• ACA Fellow, 2011 
• Archives Association of Ontario James J. Talman Award, 2015 

Further Information 

• Millar, Laura. “Heather MacNeil.” In The Encyclopedia of Archival Writers, 1515-2015. Edited by Luciana Duranti and Patricia C. Franks. Lanham, ML: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. 

Photo source: Photo provided by Heather MacNeil.

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