Professor Dagmar Hovestadt, ‘Identity and the record. Observations on who we are in Data and Archives‘, Keynote speaker, HIDDEN COST Action Conference ‘The Past, Present and Future of Identity Documentation’, 15-16 May 2025 | Maynooth University, Ireland

Dagmar Hovestadt is a researcher, author and communication expert at the intersection of archives and transitional justice. She is currently an adjunct professor at the Irish Center for Human Rights at the University of Galway (2024 – 27) and works with human rights archives in Germany and Syria. From 2011 to 2021 she was the spokesperson for the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records in Germany. She started her career as an investigative journalist in post-unification Berlin and worked as a foreign correspondent from California. She is a trustee and board member of Correctiv, a German non-profit media house, a member of the collections committee of the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, a fellow with the Global Diplomacy Lab and the BMW Responsible Leaders Network and a Fulbright and Burns Alumnae.