In this Lug post, Dr Liz O’Donnell reflects on interviews that she conducted being reused and repurposed for a radio drama, considering the attachments that we as oral historians have to the data we collect.
Continue readingRe-visiting environmental oral histories recorded over 20 years ago
As COP26 gets underway Siobhan Warrington who currently is working on the Living Deltas Hub, revisits a collection of oral histories recorded over 20 years ago with women and men living in mountain and highland regions around the world.
“The timing has gone wrong,” stated Yagjung, a 59-year-old female weaver from Uttarkhand, India, interviewed in December 1996. She was referring to the weather, to the timing of the rain and the harvests, but the idea that ‘the timing has gone wrong’ has wider relevance. Campaigners and journalists talk about climate change ‘happening now’ but for Yagjung and other mountain farmers around the world, the ‘now’ of environmental degradation and climatic changes, was 25 years ago.
Continue readingIn this Lug piece, Siobhan Warrington (NUOHUC) and her colleagues Hue Nguyen (An Giang University) and Laura Beckwith (Northumbria University) provide an update on the participatory oral history, mapping and photography work with two rural communities in the Mekong Delta as part of the Living Deltas Hub. Siobhan, Laura and Hue are working with a student-staff research team at An Giang University: Mai Thị Minh Thuy and Nguyễn Xuân Lan (research coordinators); and Hoang Uyen Cao, Huynh Linh, Lam Duy and Phan Cuong (student researchers). This is a follow-up to the post which introduced this project.
Note: Due to increasing Covid-19 infection rates in Vietnam, it has not been possible for the team to visit the communities since early July; this post is based on their visits between May and July 2021.
Continue readingOver the last several months, oral historians have been acclimatising to remote interviewing in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This shift for many (but not all) has led to a range of new methodological questions. In this Lug piece, Andy Clark reflects on the different nature of silence in remote interactions as compared with in-person encounters. Drawing on experience of both personal and professional remote conversations, he asks whether the changing dynamic of silence could have an impacts on the nature of the materials that we collect during the pandemic. Please feel free to join in the discussion using the comments section below.
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The first episode in Series 2 of the Newcastle Oral History Podcast features a conversation between Graham Smith and Wendy Rickard. Wendy is a renowned oral historian who has worked on a number of ‘taboo’ and difficult subjects, including sex working and the ongoing relationships between interviewer and interviewees. She has experience of working with medical researchers on the impact and experience of HIV/AIDS and pandemics such as Ebola and SARS. Throughout the episode, Graham and Wendy discuss the ethics of researching pandemic illness, the ‘new normal’ in the age of Covid-19, and the pros and cons of using videoconferencing tools in oral history interviews.
With Government guidelines changing, indoor gatherings and meetings are now possible, meaning that oral historians are once again able to conduct face-to-face interviews. However, the interview situation in August 2020 is vastly different from any time before. What impact does this have on the interview as an event, and what steps should oral historians take to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone invovled? In this Lug post, Andy Clark discusses his approach and experience to conducting in-person interviewing in the ‘Covid-19 era’.
Continue readingOver ten years ago, Liz O’Donnell recorded the memories of more than 40 people in the North East who, as children during the 2nd World War, had experienced the huge dislocation caused by mass evacuation. Current discussions about the damaging impact of disrupted education caused by the pandemic led her to dig out her research notes, to look at the evacuees’ recollections of their own disturbed schooling, especially their feelings about its long-term effects. All the examples here are of evacuation to villages in Northumberland, mostly from the industrial areas of Tyneside. Summaries and recordings of all the interviews are available at Northumberland Archives, Woodhorn.
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Matt Perry reviews Northern Stage‘s recent production of The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff
Continue readingSound Artist, Sound Designer, and Abstract Composer Matthew Tuckey reflects on the creation of an abstract sound composition in response to the Oral History Unit & Collective’s research with the Newcastle West End Foodbank.
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