Oral History Western Australia

The Oral History Society, United Kingdom, in partnership with the Scottish Oral History Centre, will hold its 2025 annual conference at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow on 6-7 June 2025.

The theme is ‘Whose Voices?‘.

The conference will feature a keynote address by Prof Lynn Abrams and plenary discussions on:

• Whose Voices – views from across the generations in oral history
• Whose Voices are we collecting now? Challenges, opportunities and silences.

To access the Call for Papers (deadline extended to 23 January 2025) and further information about the conference go to: https://www.ohs.org.uk/ohs-annual-conference-2025/.

This one-day workshop is ideal for those who are new to oral history and want to know more about what is involved. The workshop is also useful for librarians who are working with oral history archives, and would like an insight into the interviewing side of things.

The morning session focuses on oral history ethics, while the afternoon session is all about the practicalities of interviewing. Participants will have the opportunity to conduct a practice interview.

About the trainers:

Alison Atkinson-Phillips is the president of Oral History WA and vice president of Oral History Australia. Alison is an experienced oral historian and the author of Survivor Memorials: Remembering Trauma and Loss in Contemporary Australia, based on her oral history work with memory activists.  

Janet Baldwin has 21 years of experience in oral history: teaching, interviewing, transcribing and managing projects. Her clients include: State Library WA, WA Shires and Councils, Perth Observatory, Spiritualist women. Janet is the author of: Telescopes, Timekeeping and Teabag Jigglers and Out and About with Artemis at Perth Observatory, both based on oral history. 

Cate Pattison has worked as a social and oral historian since 2013 for a range of public and private clients, presenting and publishing her work at national and international Oral History conferences and journals.  Cate’s previous career was in media and market research, and she now also works as a heritage officer for the Royal Agricultural Society. Forthcoming publication: Gearing up the Groupies: The State Implement Works and Group Settlement in Western Australia in the 1920s and 1930s.

This one-day workshop is ideal for those who are new to oral history and want to know more about what is involved. The workshop is also useful for librarians who are working with oral history archives, and would like an insight into the interviewing side of things.

The morning session focuses on oral history ethics, while the afternoon session is all about the practicalities of interviewing. Participants will have the opportunity to conduct a practice interview.

About the trainers:

Alison Atkinson-Phillips is the president of Oral History WA and vice president of Oral History Australia. Alison is an experienced oral historian and the author of Survivor Memorials: Remembering Trauma and Loss in Contemporary Australia, based on her oral history work with memory activists.  

Janet Baldwin has 21 years of experience in oral history: teaching, interviewing, transcribing and managing projects. Her clients include: State Library WA, WA Shires and Councils, Perth Observatory, Spiritualist women. Janet is the author of: Telescopes, Timekeeping and Teabag Jigglers and Out and About with Artemis at Perth Observatory, both based on oral history. 

Cate Pattison has worked as a social and oral historian since 2013 for a range of public and private clients, presenting and publishing her work at national and international Oral History conferences and journals.  Cate’s previous career was in media and market research, and she now also works as a heritage officer for the Royal Agricultural Society. Forthcoming publication: Gearing up the Groupies: The State Implement Works and Group Settlement in Western Australia in the 1920s and 1930s.

The 23rd International Oral History Association (IOHA) Conference is scheduled for Kraków, Poland from 16-19 September 2025.

The theme of the conference is Re-Thinking Oral History.

Biennial conferences of the International Oral History Association (IOHA) allow for reviewing the global conditions and problems of oral history, regardless of the actual conference theme. This time, however, the organizers of the 23^rd IOHA Conference call on oral historians worldwide to consciously rethink the idea and practice of their discipline.

Oral history today faces both old and new challenges with long-lasting and unpredictable consequences: the crisis of liberal democracy, growing tensions in international politics, climate change with its devastating outcomes on human life, increasing inequalities, wars, and mass migrations. All of the foregoing not only affect the conditions in which oral history is made, but also compels us to rethink its very aim. For Central and Eastern Europe, the full-scale Russian aggression in Ukraine beginning in February 2022 and its consequences are an especially painful reminder of that. Though oral history was, and still is a part of history, it has always been conscious of the responsibility (oral) history has for the current society. Aware of that mission, we encourage the global oral history community to return to the core questions of our practice: what kind of histories should we tell and pass on to the current and future generation

Find out more about the conference at: https://ioha2025.conference.pl/.

See the Call for Papers – https://ioha2025.conference.pl/en/call-for-papers. The deadline for proposal submissions was 31 August 2024.