Guest Post by Cynthia Brown Last month 35 oral historians got together in Ipswich for the Oral History Society‘s annual regional networkers event. The event, organised by regional network co-ordinator Juliana Vandegrift, enables the society’s network of oral historians around the country to get together, share stories and catch up both on personal and society… [Read more…]
As part of UK Disability History Month, the British Library is making available a new online package of oral history interviews – Disability Voices– which charts the experiences of disabled people. The Disability Voices online interviews have been collated from a number of project partnerships and collections gathered over the past decade, and more will… [Read more…]
This just a signposting blogpost today to point out a short article that appeared in the US version of “The Daily” (the News Corporation’s iPad newspaper) on 7th November 2011. It contains a few interesting snipppets from the authors/ compilers of recent and popular oral history books. From the AIDS crisis to the birth of punk, to tales from the… [Read more…]
Students and staff at the University of Sheffield have begun work on ‘Life in Sheffield in the 1980s’, a new oral history project for students at the Department of History at the University of Sheffield: ‘When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground’. History isn’t just books in the library, it’s also people’s… [Read more…]
The inaugural Spring School in Oral History will be held on 26-28 April 2012 at the Institute for Historical Research, London, in association with the Oral History Society. The first two days will focus upon six major themes, or issues, within oral history: memory; experience; the researcher’s habitus; re-use of recordings; representativeness and generalisability; and… [Read more…]
Brighton Swimming Club has received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create an accessible archive that delves into a fascinating and extensive heritage of swimming in Brighton using archives that date back to 1860. Founded on the 4th May 1860, at a meeting held at the Jolly Fisherman’s Inn in Market Street, Brighton –… [Read more…]
At 8.22am on Friday 22nd September 1989 a massive blast destroyed all three floors of the recreation centre at the Royal Marine School of Music, Deal, killing 10 bandsmen and injuring 22, one of whom died a month later. The Deal Barracks bombing was part of a concerted campaign by the IRA against the deployment of… [Read more…]
The Public History group has been running at Ruskin College alongside conferences, seminars and the MA in Public History for some 15 years. With the decision to stop running the successful MA in Public History – which was the first of its kind in Britain and followed the long tradition of history-making at Ruskin pioneered… [Read more…]
Post by Janet Swan and Sarah Lee Football, not cotton is the thread running through the lives of people in Burnley in an area once at the heart of the weaving industry. And now for the first time, the stories, memories and traditions of fans are being woven together into Burnley Football Club’s first unofficial history.… [Read more…]
The Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton has announced its seminar series for the academic year 2011-2012: 19 October 2011: Professor Timothy Ashplant, independent scholar ‘Working-class Life Writing: from Micro-story to Macro-perspectives through a Critical and Pedagogic Online Edition’ 9 November 2011: Professor Christine Gledhill, University of Sunderland ‘The… [Read more…]
Wendy Ugolini, history lecturer at Edinburgh University and Oral History Society committee member, talks about her new book: “Having started my oral history research on the experiences of Italians in Scotland during the Second World War many years ago, it is immensely satisfying to see the final version published as part of Manchester University Press’s… [Read more…]
This post is another article signposting, this time to a piece in The Wall Street Journal. With the considerable rise in using oral history as a way to write “popular” and accessible histories of people, trends, events and phenomena, and in this case, music, Mark Yarm, author of the well-received Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History… [Read more…]
The Association of Art Historians is proud to announce the launch of our online resource of audio recordings, Voices in Art History: AAH Oral Histories. The Association of Art Historians was formed in 1974, born out of a need to professionalize a rapidly growing subject. But what exactly prompted the formation of the AAH? How… [Read more…]
Here’s a great little blog post I spotted on the Hodder History Nest website by John D. Clare, in which he discusses the use of oral history in the secondary school classroom and makes a plea to Historian (and Government Advisor) Simon Schama: Link to article here
Along with many oral history enthusiasts from the East Midlands and beyond, I attended the East Midlands Oral History Archive’s (EMOHA) Oral History Day on Wednesday 6th July 2011. It was a great day, with many interesting presentations and a good exchange of ideas for, and experiences of, the world of oral history. Towards the end… [Read more…]
The BBC have revamped some of their oral history guidance. The older stuff had been languishing in their website since 2005. The new stuff, filed under their Hands on History brand, now includes a video, entitled “How to undertake your own oral history interview”. There are some basic but shiny new PDF guidance sheets too.… [Read more…]
I listened to a really interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, The Reunion, which reunited Nick Leeson, the man who broke Barings Bank, with his colleagues and former boss, Peter Norris. Nick Leeson was the trader whose fraud caused the UK’s oldest investment bank to collapse in 1995 with £830 million of debt. The… [Read more…]
Just a small post today to point out the piece in the Financial Times about oral history at the British Library and the work of National Life Stories. The article “History in the Speaking” was published last Friday and you can read it here. With thanks to Craig Fees for circulating this.
Yey, oral history seminars are now alive and kicking at the Institute for Historical Research, London! They are organised by Dr Shelley Trower (Exeter) and Dr Michelle Winslow (Sheffield). Forthcoming seminars include: 19th January 2012- Carrie Hamilton, Roehampton University, on Oral history in conditions of political conflict and controversy 19th April 2012 Steven High, Concordia University, on Montreal life stories: oral history at the… [Read more…]
Following the excellent Oral History Day by East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) yesterday (6th July 2011), I thought I’d share a website with you I have come across in the past, that I have used, and have now been reminded of. It’s the Interviewing for Research site by Colin Hyde, from EMOHA . The great thing is… [Read more…]
In March 2007, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in partnership with the Imperial War Museum’s sound archive, began a two-year oral history project concerned with Far East prisoners of war (FEPOW) experiences. And now the oral history interviews are online. The FEPOW Oral History Project focuses on the British experience of Far East captivity.… [Read more…]
The National Archives’ Archive Sector Development department is continuing to support archives seeking funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) through its training programme. They will be running free one-day workshops focused on the HLF’s two main grants programmes ‘Your Heritage’ and ‘Heritage Grants’ at locations around the UK in 2011/12. These workshops are designed… [Read more…]
I recently came across this interesting blog post by Jim Richardson for Museum Next about oral history and social media, including a review of the work of StoryCorps (USA), StoryVault and the British Library’s UK SoundMap. Whether you’re a “tweep” and not, it’s worth a read: http://www.museumnext.org/2010/blog/what-can-social-media-do-for-oral-history
Michele Losse, of Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, has recently started to blog about her work on the Kew Oral History Project and how she is capturing the memories of Kew staff. She’s already put some videos up of some of the interviews to date. You can check out the blog at http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/library-art-archives/hidden-memories.htm
Voice for Disability (formerly West Sussex Association for Disabled People) has announced its new oral history project called ‘Speaking up for Disability’. This project is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and will run for two years. ‘Speaking up for Disability’ will map out the oral histories and heritage of a diverse group of disabled people from across West… [Read more…]
I’ve just come across The Tell Me Project, “an innovative educational project connecting young people with the older generation” . The initiators of the Isle of Man-based project say that the project “gives older people the opportunity to share their memories of times past with school children through recorded interview”. And if you play the introductory video… [Read more…]
The Thame Museum in Oxfordshire has recently put a selection of their local oral history interviews online. Their oral history project began in 2007 and some 40 people have been interviewed so far with the recordings covering a range of local subjects, places and events. Now 16 of the local residents’ interviews have been put here on… [Read more…]
The Oral History Company recently announced its collaboration with Leeds City Council (City Museum & Libraries), The Thoresby Society, and West Yorkshire Archive Service, on a new initiative to construct a web portal for the gathering together of oral history archives throughout the Leeds area. They are now on the hunt for oral histories of… [Read more…]
The Oxford Oral History Series showcases the best of current work in oral history and aims to advance methodological and theoretical understandings of the field. It is international and interdisciplinary in scope and includes volumes for academic, professional, and general audiences. Recent titles in the series include: The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi… [Read more…]
For those of you with profiles on the website LinkedIn, you might be interested to know there is an Oral History Network group, which has more than 300 members. The LinkedIn group “aims to provide a space for networking and discussion opportunity amongst oral history practitioners and Life Story collectors across the world”. You can join… [Read more…]
December 4, 2011
by Anne
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