Past Events
Seminar Series: Joanna Bornat, Oral History and Re-Use
- Venue: Armstrong Building G.08, Newcastle University
- Start: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 17:30:00 GMT
- End: Wed, 12 Dec 2018 19:00:00 GMT
The many thousands of hours of oral history interviews deposited in archives are a rich resource. Few are re-used and in this talk I will explore why this is and what we gain from re-use.
Re-use means considering the importance of time: the time of the original interview; lapse of time; times remembered and future time. All this complicates what can be known about the context of archived interviews and the history of projects. With this in mind, oral historians need to consider the sustainability and ethics of their interview practice and how their interviews might be used or understood by other, future, researchers.
I will explore these issues with examples from my own and others’ interviews, aiming to show that oral historians must necessarily think about the future as they investigate the past.
Helen Foster is Emeritus Professor of Oral History at the Open University and a long-standing editor of Oral History. During her career she has researched and published on NHS overseas-trained doctors, intergenerational relationships, memory and belief, reminiscence and secondary analysis, among other topics.
The Oral History Seminar Series brings leading figures in the field of oral history to Newcastle to discuss their work and the ideas that inform it. Each event aims to provide a thought-provoking forum for conversation and debate. Whatever your experience or interest in oral history, we will be pleased to see you there.