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What might oral history contribute to our understanding of health inequalities? And what happens when life history interviews are placed in conversation with epidemiological or public health evidence? These questions are at the centre of a new 12-month AHRC-funded Curiosity project exploring ageing, identity, health and wellbeing among the Irish diaspora in the North-East of England, awarded to Newcastle University colleagues. Led by Dr Sarah Campbell (History), with Dr Jack Hepworth (History) and Professor Matthew Prina (Professor of Ageing and Epidemiology at the Population Health Sciences Institute) as Co-Is, and in partnership with the Tyneside Irish Cultural Society<\/a> (TICS) and its Raised on Songs and Stories<\/em> <\/a>(RoSS) initiative, the project will explore how experiences of migration, work, community and belonging have shaped health across the life course.<\/p>\n\n\n The Irish are now the oldest ethnic group in England and Wales, while Irish populations experience disproportionately high levels of chronic illness, disability, loneliness and premature mortality. These questions resonate particularly in the North-East where Irish migration to the region has been closely connected to mining, shipbuilding, steel, construction and other forms of demanding industrial labour. The subsequent ageing of that migrant population has been contextualised by deindustrialisation and the emergence of some of Britain\u2019s most persistent regional health inequalities. Yet statistics can only tell us part of this story. Knowing that a population experiences poorer health outcomes does not, by itself, tell us how those inequalities have been lived and understood. Nor can it tell us how people connect present-day health to earlier experiences of migration and work; how encounters with healthcare institutions have been shaped by identity; or how ideas about health, care and ageing circulate between generations. The project will use oral history to explore some of these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A dialogue between oral history and epidemiology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside the interviews, the project will develop a pilot quantitative survey of the Irish diaspora in the North-East, examining issues including physical and mental health, loneliness and social isolation, ageism, access to care, housing and neighbourhood attachment. The survey will be co-produced with community partners and older Irish migrants, helping us identify categories and questions that make sense to the people whose experiences we are seeking to understand. The idea is that the two forms of evidence will interact throughout the project, rather than exist in parallel. Preliminary survey findings will help identify questions and patterns for deeper exploration through oral history. In turn, the oral histories will help us interpret, and potentially complicate, the patterns identified quantitatively. This creates interesting possibilities for both disciplines. Epidemiology can help oral historians situate individual accounts within wider patterns of health inequality and ask new questions about the relationship between biography and population-level trends. Oral history, meanwhile, can reveal some of the complexity concealed within epidemiological categories. A survey might identify social isolation, poor health or difficulties accessing services; a life history can explore what \u2018isolation\u2019 actually means to someone, how they understand the origins of poor health, or why particular institutions are trusted or distrusted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Co-production, community and the future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tyneside Irish Cultural Society and its community care outreach project, Raised on Songs and Stories, <\/em>will partner to shape the research questions, survey, recruitment and dissemination. Working through trusted community relationships is particularly important when discussing potentially sensitive experiences of health, migration, discrimination and ageing. Workshops with academics, community organisations and policy and practice partners will help us refine the methodology of this pilot project, including roundtables with local authorities. The project will then invite NHS practitioners and voluntary-sector organisations to consider what the findings might mean for culturally competent and regionally informed care. Ultimately, we hope the project will provide the foundations for a larger national study of ageing and the Irish diaspora, allowing us to compare experiences across different parts of Britain. But it is also an opportunity to experiment methodologically: to ask what happens when oral historians and epidemiologists begin with a shared problem rather than parallel disciplinary approaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ageing and the Irish Diaspora in Britain: Oral Histories, Generational Change and Welfare Futures Sarah Campbell, Jack Hepworth and Matthew Prina, have been awarded new AHRC funding to explore ageing and welfare amongst the Irish diaspora in Britain. Here, Sarah … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/files\/2026\/09\/2.png\")
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