The articles in this Focus section offer critical interventions that will be useful not only to historical geographers but to any geographer who embarks on archival research, particularly research engaging with the state. The articles engage not only with the archive-as-source but with the scholar’s physical experience of the archive-as-site or archive-as-place. Consequently, it is not only the documents held in an archive that inform our research on the state but the state of the archives themselves as contested places that can help us read the state against the grain. The experiences of the researcher attempting to engage with an archive and the presences and absences in the collections offer important historical clues to understanding the nature of the state that produced the archives. Exploring these dynamics from different perspectives, the articles in this collection engage with the neoliberal, postcolonial, counterinsurgent, and carceral states. Key Words: archival research, archives, methodology, state.

本焦点部分的文章提供了重要的干预措施，这些干预措施不仅对历史地理学家有用，而且对任何从事档案研究的地理学家都有用，特别是与国家相关的研究。这些文章不仅涉及作为源的档案，还涉及学者对作为站点或作为场所的档案的物理体验。因此，不仅是档案馆中保存的文件为我们对国家的研究提供了信息，而且档案馆本身作为有争议的地方也可以帮助我们逆向解读国家。研究人员试图与档案接触的经历以及馆藏中的存在和缺失为理解产生档案的国家的性质提供了重要的历史线索。从不同的角度探索这些动态，关键词：档案研究、档案、方法论、状态。