Oral History Unit and Collective

The Collective operates on the basis of project funding and continues to ensure Newcastle's reputation as a leading provider of high quality oral history research and teaching.

The Oral History Unit & Collective at Newcastle University was launched in January 2018 and was funded for four years with a University strategic investment grant. Since 2023 we have been unable to offer free advise in support as we did when we had a core centrally funded unit, but we continue to work across diverse academic disciplines in an equitable basis, from creative arts to medicine, and in partnership with researchers from across the world, as well as history groups and community historians. Our research and teaching explores the role of oral history in communicating the past in the present. The Collective's blog The Lug provides an online space to share news, events and reflections on current research. 

We also continue to operate a reading group and a newsletter.

 

UKRI-funded "Living Deltas" Global Research Hub

Living Deltas Hub: Graham Smith with Siobhan Warrington are part of an international team exploring popular memories of environmental change funded by the Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF).

Covid-19 and Mutual Aid

The Oral History Collective is undertaking a pilot study into mutual aid networks in light of Covid-19, to understand how these groups operate, the reasons people have become involved, and their hopes for the future.

Deindustrial Pasts and Present Inequalities

NOHUC Research Associate Andy Clark has received a prestigious ESRC New Investigator Award to undertake the project 'Deindustrial Pasts and Present Inequalities: An Oral History of Deindustrialisation and Experiences of Ageing’.

Foodbank Histories

Foodbank Histories is a collaboration with Northern Cultural Projects and the Newcastle West End Foodbank, led by Silvie Fisch and Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips.

Funding Success: Oral History of Lockerbie Disaster

Congratulations to our research associate, Dr Andy Clark, who has been awarded a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust grant to undertake an oral history of the 1988 Lockerbie Disaster.

Collaboration with UNITE

The Oral History Unit is assisting UNITE on an oral history project about the union's work since 1920.

Wastes & Strays collaboration with Newcastle University Law School

We are delighted to have appointed a new member of the Oral History Unit, Olivia Dee, working on a major AHRC-funded research project, Wastes and Strays: The Past, Present and Future of English Urban Commons

New public history website: We Made Ships

A new education website, We Made Ships, has been created by unit members Rosie Bush and Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips to make the history of shipbuilding accessible to a new generation of students.

Consultancy on 'Roma Stories' Heritage Lottery Fund Project

Graham Smith has worked as a consultant on this important community oral history project, led by the London-based Roma Support Group.

Deindustrialisation, Heritage and Memory Network

Oral History research associate, Dr Andy Clark, has received funding from the British Academy to establish a new network for academic and community historians & heritage practitioners interested in deindustrialisation.

Be Part of the Collective

If you would like to be part of the Oral History Collective, the first step is to sign up to our monthly mailing list.

You may also like to come along to our online Monthly Drop-In, first Friday of each month or our monthly reading group.

Or join the online community through our blog, The Lug.