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.