Oral History Network
The Warwick Oral History Network aims at developing a network of researchers from a variety of disciplines who are interested in oral history research, or who are collecting interviews. It engages both with theoretical and practical issues involved in interviewing and life writing.
Following on the interdisciplinary seminar ‘Challenging dominant discourses of the past: 1968 and the value of oral history’
(the papers of which have been published in Memory Studies, Vol. 6.1, January 2013), the network brings together established scholars, early career researchers, postgraduates as well as undergraduate students, both from in and outside the University of Warwick.
The network was launched in June 2011 and a number of events, including a conference on gender and subjectivity with Prof. Penny Summerfield (Manchester) as keynote speaker, have taken place since.
The network now also has a page on Facebook, where members can comment directly on posts and leave messages, provided of course these relate to oral history: https://www.facebook.com/oralhistorynetwork
EVENTS
Upcoming conference:
Talking about protest. Oral history methodology in social and political movements research.
Friday 20 September 2013
Keynote speaker: Prof. Lynn Abrams, University of Glasgow
Click here for the CFP (deadline 2 June 2013)
- Webinar: Oral history & ethnography, in collaboration with Monash University, 3 June 2013, 9.30-11am (R012) - click here for details
- Seminar: Oral history & institutional history - the Warwick project 'The Voice of the Past' (part 2), 12 March 2013, 4-5pm (H042), with tea & coffee from 3.45 onwards - click here for details
- Oral history 'clinic', 15 January 2013, 3.15-4.15pm (H449). Bring your questions along for one-to-one advice with Angela Davis.
- Seminar: Oral history & institutional history - the Warwick project 'The Voice of the Past' (part 1), 22 November 2012, 5-7pm (H042). With Richard Aldrich (IAS) - click here for details and summary
- Introduction and get together, 23 October 2012, 12-2pm (H449). A drop in session with Angela Davis (History) for would-be and existing members to talk about the Oral History Network and get to know one another and our research - click here for details
- Seminar: Oral history & the community, 9 July 2012, 2-4pm (IAS seminar room). With Stacey Bains (Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry), Helen Ford (Modern Records Centre) and Colin Hyde (East Midlands Oral History Archive) - click here for details, summary and podcasts
- IAS workshop: Narrating a Gendered Self in Post-War Britain, 24 February 2012 (IAS seminar room). Organised by network member Celia Hughes (IAS) - click here for details
- Researcher to Researcher, 29 November 2011, 5-7pm (Wolfson Research Exchange, University Library). With Angela Davis (History) and network members Laura King (History) and Celia Hughes (IAS) - click here for details
- Conference: Gender, Subjectivity and Oral History, 24 November 2011 (IAS seminar room). Keynote speaker Prof. Penny Summerfield (University of Manchester) - click here for details, summary and podcasts
- Seminar: What is oral history?, 13 October 2011, 2-4pm (Wolfson Research Exchange, University Library). With Anna Davin (HWJ) - click here for details, summary and podcasts
- Launch seminar, 14 June 2011, 2-5pm (IAS seminar room) - click here for a summary and podcasts
TRAINING
Click here for details
LINKS & RESOURCES
Associazione Italiana di Storia Orale (AISO, Italy)
Canadian Oral History Association
Centre for the study of Cultural Memory (CCM)
East Midlands Oral History Archive
Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick
Oral History Association (USA)
Oral History at the British Library
Oral history guide by Graham Smith, sponsored by the Warwick History Subject Centre
Oral History Network of Ireland
Oral History Association of South Africa
Oral History Society (UK)
'The making of oral history' guide by Graham Smith
Video oral history - suggestions and tools
Research guides on oral history methodology (Andrea Hajek)
Report of Alessandro Portelli's lecture Theatres of Memory, Memory as Theatre (8 November 2011, Andrea Hajek)
Report of the Gender, Subjectivity and Oral History conference (24 November 2011, Laura King)
Report of the Oral history & the Community seminar (9 July 2012, Angela Davis)
Who owns oral history? A creative commons solution by Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson
Oral history blog: http://oralhistorynoticeboard.wordpress.com/
PUBLISHING
Oral History (journal of the Oral History Society)
Oral History Forum (journal of the Canadian Oral History Association)
Oral History Review (journal of the Oral History Association)
Words and silences (online journal of the International Oral History Association)
Oxford University Press - Oral History Series
Palgrave Macmillan - Studies in Oral History
READING
The following three books are available for members of the network to use for reference:
- Lynn Abrams, Oral history theory (2010)
- Valerie J. Janesick, Oral history for the qualitative researcher (2010)
- Robert Perks & Alistair Thomson (eds), The oral history reader, 2nd edition (2006)
The books are located at the IAS. Please contact Angela or Andrea for details of how to consult them.
Link to articles about using oral history sources, put together by April Gallwey
NETWORK MEMBERS
| NAME | AFFILIATION | RESEARCH INTERESTS |
| Malik Ahmad | Department of History, University of Warwick | Nonviolent Movements of Pakistan 1947-2007; oral history |
| Katherine Angel | Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick | History of twentieth-century psychiatry, sexology, feminism, and sexuality, especially from post-1945 to the present day; American and British psychiatry; the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of American psychiatry; sexual dysfunctions in psychiatry, medicine and popular culture |
| Catherine Baker | University of Hull | Former soldiers and interpreters and peacekeeping in Bosnia |
| Sarah Jane Bell | Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln | Cross generational oral history; educational experiences of gypsy travellers; race and gender |
| Abigail Bernard | Independent researcher | Community heritage oral history; life stories and African & Caribbean history in the UK |
| Judith Beyer | Max Planke Institute for Social Anthroplogy, Halle (Germany) | Social anthropology; Central Asia |
| Bruno Bonomo | Department of History Culture and Religion, University of Rome (Italy) | Urban history; oral history; housing and urban lifestyles in post-war Italy; the relationship between dwelling space (the home, its surroundings, and its location) and social identity |
| Maud Bracke | School of Humanities, University of Glasgow | 1970s feminism; 1968 in Italy, France, Czechoslovakia; parties and movements of the left; memory |
| Jane Bradburn | Independent researcher | Oral history |
| Hannah Bradshaw | School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Liverpool | The appropriation and adaptation of media sources by indigenous communities in Colombia and Venezuela |
| Ramona Braun | HPS, University of Cambridge | Laparoscopy in gynaecology, 1950s - 1980s |
| Anita Broad | The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, University of Sussex | Rural women's sport |
| Lisa Calevi | Department of Art History, University of Oregon in Eugene (USA) | Women; Jewish community in Venice |
| Daniela Cavallaro | Department of Italian, University of Auckland (New Zealand) |
literature (women's theatre) and educational theatre for young women after WWII in Italy |
| Rebecca Clifford | Department of History and Classics, University of Swansea | 1968 in Italy |
| Fiona Cosson | Department of History, University of Northampton | Oral history; memory studies; the role of local history in the understanding; memories and articulation of senses of community |
| Tracy Craggs | Independent researcher | Military personnel from the 1930s to the present; Holocaust survivors; peace campaigners; farmers and environmental issues |
| Angela Davis | Department of History, University of Warwick | British twentieth-century social history; motherhood, childhood and the family; child development; health and welfare in post-war Britain; oral history |
| Saniye Dedeoglu | School of Health and Social Studies, University of Warwick | Turkish family-owned businesses and female employment, ethnic economy and the social inclusion of migrants in the wider society |
| Sarah De Nardi | Department of Geography, University of Hull |
Embodied and emotional landscapes of the Italian Resistance; veteran memories of WWII |
| Francesco Di Bartolo | University of Palermo (Italy) |
Fascist regimes; Peasant movements; Agrarian reform and state intervention in the redistribution of land; the history of the Mafia; Economic development; Industrialization and the end industrially; Memory studies |
| Karin Eli | Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford | Eating disorders; selfhood, embodiment, and identity; the social implications of genetic research; public understanding of biomedical science; the history of psychiatric genetic research; narratives and oral history |
| Federico Fabris | Department of English, University of Bamberg (Germany) | Postcolonial theory; European migration studies; Dialogue in literature and philosophy; Black British Literature; Italian Migration Literature |
| Romaine Farquet | Center for the Understanding of Social Processes, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) | Albanian nationalism; Migration studies; Gender; Performance; Emotions; Oral history |
| Isabelle Felici | Department of Italian Studies, Montpellier University Paul Valéry (France) | Italian emigration; Italian anarchists in exile |
| Hector Maldonado Felix | Department of History, University Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru) | Oral History of San Marcos University 1940-2013 |
| Alexander Freund | Department of History/Chair in German-Canadian Studies/Oral History Centre, University of Winnipeg (Canada) | Oral History of Refugees in Winnipeg Since 1945; Oral History and Photography; Dealing With the Past Abroad: Germans, Jews, and the Nazi Past in North America Since 1945 |
| April Gallwey | Department of History, University of Warwick | The social history of lone motherhood in the post-1945 period; women's history and the history of the family; oral history and life history methods |
| Talvinder Gill | Department of History, University of Warwick | Indian Workers' Association (IWA) in the post-war period; oral history; identity formation; race relations and 'multiculturalism'; class |
| Anna von der Goltz | Department of History, University of Cambridge | German political and cultural history of the twentieth century; political and cultural activism in both German states in the 1960s and 1970s; the history of myth, memory and commemoration; the history of generations; oral histories of political activism |
| Craig Griffiths | Queen Mary University of London | West German Gay and Lesbian Movement in the 1970s, gender presentation; the "rediscovery" and utilisation of the Pink Triangle symbol; oral history; the historiography of gay liberation |
| Loredana Guerrieri | Independent researcher | Oral history and protest movements in the 1960s; Italian neo-fascist movements in the postwar period; extreme right political violence in the 1970s; European right-wing political and cultural movements; gender studies |
| Andrea Hajek | Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (associate fellow) |
Modern Italian history; European protest movements; memory studies; intergenerational memory; oral history; visual culture; digital memories |
| Cressida Haynes | Independent researcher | the 1964 election in Smethwick |
| Sasha Hepburn | Department of History, University of Sheffield | African history; labour history; gender history |
| Joanna Herbert | Queen Mary, University of London | Migration; ethnicity; gender; South Asian diaspora; whiteness and racisms; oral histories and narratives |
| Paolo Heywood | Department of Anthropology, University of Cambridge | Anthropology, gender, masculinity, sexuality |
| Katherine Holden | Department of History Politics and Philosophy, University of the West of England |
19th/ 20th century British social history, history of the family, history of childhood, 19th/20th century women's history and gender history, oral history |
| Celia Hughes | University of Copenhagen (Denmark) |
Post-war social, political and cultural British history; the British Left in the 1960s and 1970s; second-wave feminism; sexual politics; post-war narratives of selfhood; gender relations; memory; oral history |
| Katharina Karcher | German Department, University of Warwick | Women's participation in armed struggle in Germany since the 1970s |
| Laura King | Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds | Fatherhood; cultural history; gender history |
| Milena Kremakova | Department of Sociology, University of Warwick | The post-socialist transition; maritime labour and market mechanisms; qualitative methodologies, esp. oral history and everyday life; issues of translation |
| Christine Lohmeier | University of Munich (Germany) |
media, migration, memory, transnational communiation, identity |
| Michèle Losse | The Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew | Kew Gardens; oral history |
| Emma Lowman | Department of Sociology, University of Warwick | The theory & practice of Indigenous research methodologies in the academy; the study of missionary histories in BC in the late 19th and early 20th centuries |
| Matthew MacDonald | Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University (Canada) |
Emerging technologies that aid in the dissemination, capture, preservation or understanding of the narrative |
| Alexi Marchel | Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick | Performance studies; memorialisation; IRS Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada |
| Ivana Margarese | Arco, University of Palermo (Italy) | archives, cinema of amatorial memories, family |
| Joseph Maslen | University of Central Lancashire | Popular memory; family and generational life histories; reminiscence and older people |
| Imogen Michel | School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh | Peace and environmental activists in the UK; oral history |
| Kayleigh Milden | History Department, University of Exeter | The oral and visual culture of Cornish Methodism; border identity and narrative (with specific interest in Celticborder regions); family and community memory |
| Flora Munpreet | University of Birmingham | Oral history and storytelling in relation to faith and culture |
| Saima Nasar | University of Birmingham | Britain's East African Asian population |
| Elizabeth Newton | Institute of Education, University of Worcester | Religious education in Birmingham during the 1960s and 1970s |
| Leyla Neyzi | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Sabancı University (Turkey) |
Remembering Armenians in Turkey; postmemories of Kurdish and Turkish youth in Turkey |
| Yoana Fernanda Nieto Valdivieso | Department of Social Sciences, University of Hull | gender and political violence, anthropology of violence, memory, literatures of the unspeakable, critical theory |
| Tomoe Otsuki | Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (Canada) |
Gender and representation of the past in postwar society; Atomic Bomb memory and testimony; colonial memory in East Asia; memorial museums |
| Tom Owen | Department of History, University of Warwick | Anti-Freemasonry in post-war Britain; conspiracy theory or the 'paranoid style'; moral panic, deviance and modern witch hunting |
| Shirley Pemberton | Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London | Oral history and narratives; post-war Caribbean migration to and from Britain; transnationalism; identity; informal and formal networks. |
| Catarina Pereira | Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London |
Cultural and Gender Studies; Memory Studies; Material Culture; Postcolonial Identities; Sensory Ethnography; Biographical Research; Media Reception Studies and Oral History |
| Nicola Pratt | Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick |
The post-1967 history of women’s public participation and women’s rights in three Arab countries; personal narratives of women activists |
| Charlene Price | History, Open University | Local history, social history, women’s history, women factory workers in the Second World War |
| Sarah Reader | Independent researcher | The impact of the Portuguese dictatorship (the 'Estado Novo') and the carnation revolution on Portugal's politics, culture and society |
| Nolan Reilly | Co-Director, Oral History Centre, University of Winnipeg (Canada) | Social and movements post WWII North America; oral history theory and methods |
| Ben Rogaly | Department of Geography, University of Sussex | Citizenship, work, identity, place and belonging in contemporary England |
| Sofia Serenelli | Department of History, University of Reading | Italian Twentieth Century History; cultural history; history of the family and domesticity; art and material culture; oral history; micro-history, 196; Fascism |
| Alejandra Serpente | Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London | Postmemory; Latin American diasporas; Chilean and Argentinean exile; human rights; gender; trauma |
| Jeanette Silva | Department of Sociology, University of Warwick | Gender and higher education; feminist theories and methodologies; sociology of higher education; citizenship, higher education and migration in the global era; post-colonial studies and feminist social movements |
| Richard Smith | Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick | History of language education; history of applied linguistics |
| Victoria Smith | Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick | Comparative cultural studies; memory studies; oral history and its narrative forms; collective memory of domestic slavery in Chana, West Africa |
| Stephen Soanes | Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick | Convalescence and the Public Mental Hospital in England, 1919-1939 |
| Ljubica Spaskovska | Department of History, University of Exeter | Youth supra-national cultures in late socialism/post-socialism |
| Richard C. Subber | Moravian College Bethlehem (USA) |
Archiving current oral histories of active college students/faculty/staff/alumni at Moravian College |
| Roxsana Sussewell | Independent researcher | Life histories of human rights/activists with particular reference to South Africa |
| Darshi Thoradeniya | Department of History, University of Warwick | Women's health and body in post-independent Sri Lanka; oral history |
| Simona Tobia | School of Languages and European Studies, University of Reading | Humanity through the lens of war and conflict; military interrogations, war crimes investigations |
| Shelley Trower | English Department, University of Exeter | Myth and nationalism; work and landscape/place; writing and voice |
| Emma Uprichard | Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick | Cities, food, children and childhood, time and temporality |
| Pippa Virdee | De Montfort University, Leicester |
India; Pakistan; gender politics |
| Richard Wallace | Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick | Cinema projectionists; film exhibition |
| Rosalind Watkiss Singleton | University of Wolverhampton | Post-war working class |
| Rebecca Williams | Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick | History of medicine in South Asia; family planning; population control in post-1947 India |
| Michelle Winslow | Academic Unit of Supportive Care, Univesity of Sheffield | Oral history; palliative care |
| Nana Zhang | Department of Sociology, University of Warwick | Labour and migration in China, children in migration; guanxi networks in China |
ABOUT US
Angela Davis is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, University of Warwick. Her research to date has focused on motherhood in postwar England. She is currently working on a project looking at the provision and experience of pre-school childcare in Britain during the years 1939-1979, also using oral history. Email: angela.davis@warwick.ac.uk
Andrea Hajek received her doctorate in the Italian department, with a dissertation on the public memory of a 1970s protest movement in Italy. During an Early Career Fellowship at the IAS she turned her attention to oral history. Until December 2011 she was a Visiting Fellow at the University of London, where she worked - among other things - on an oral history project funded by the British Academy. She is currently preparing her PhD for publication in the Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies series. Email: andreahajek@gmail.com
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