Oral History Western Australia

The National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) will hold its biennial conference from 18-20 September 2026 at the Tūranga Central City Library, Christchurch. The theme of the conference is Tūranga | Places we belong.

Proposals for a paper or panel should be submitted by Monday 25 May 2026.

For details go to the Call for Papers: https://www.oralhistory.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/NOHANZ-CALL-FOR-PAPERS-2026.pdf.

First Friday of every month, 12noon. Join us online for a member sharing event. Hear what other members are doing, share your latest project, and get advice from the OHWA Committee and experienced practitioners. BYO lunch and a cuppa.

Email contact@oralhistorywa.org.au for the Teams link or to find out more details.

Host: Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips, OHWA President.

Alison is an experienced oral and public historian, and is senior lecturer in Community Development at Murdoch University where she teaches about the importance of storytelling in community building. In her oral history practice, she is particularly interested in the ways different kinds of interview prompts (photos, videos or personal archives, for example) impact on the ways people remember in interviews. Alison is currently working with community co-operative Dwellbeing Shieldfield (UK) to develop a community archive.

Presenters: Carla Pascoe Leahy, Sarah Rood and Alistair Thomson

Dates: October 9, 10, 23 and 24 (Fridays and Saturdays)

Time: 9:30am-4:00pm

Location: Online

Are you a PhD, Masters or Honours student, or a post-doc, about to start a research project using oral history – and need training to get you on the right track? Perhaps you’ve already started a graduate oral history project and want advice and support? You may be a historian, or you work in another social science or humanities discipline that uses life story interviews.

This four-day, online training course could be just what you need.

In October 2026, three of Australia’s leading oral historians, in partnership with Oral History Victoria, are teaching this popular oral history intensive course aimed at university research students. We will teach you how to plan an oral history project and apply for ethics approval. You’ll learn how to create excellent interviews and document the recordings for use in research. We’ll explore approaches to analysing interviews and interpreting memories. And we’ll consider how to write a thesis using oral history and to create other types of oral history productions.

You will be active participants in the teaching and learning: reading a selection of key texts, bringing examples and issues from you own research, workshopping issues with the group, conducting practice interviews, discussing interview extracts from each participant, and developing a peer support group of graduate oral history researchers from around Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Each day school will be taught online via Zoom, from 9.30am-4pm Australian Eastern Standard time. The course will be limited to 18 participants.

Feedback from participants in this course in 2024 and 2025:
“Many thanks for a terrific 4 days from the three of you from OHV … so valuable in redirecting and redrafting my research project. Initially I had doubts about the full value of a day zoom meet with 14 or 17 post grads, but it exceeded all expectations.”

“It was terrific to have access to such skilled teachers/facilitators and to come together with other graduate students and to receive such a vast array of helpful resources.”

“I was very happy with the course – expert presenters who were very respectful of/responsive to the participants, great management with everything running on time, different formats to maintain interest, relevant/engaging activities especially listening to everyone’s interview extracts.”

“Al, Carla and Sarah, you made such a warm and welcoming environment! You were all engaging, and passionate and held space for everyone’s opinions and thoughts. Thank you!”

Course outline
Day 1 Friday – Planning Your Oral History Project & Seeking Ethics Approval
Day 2 Saturday – Creating & Documenting Oral History Interviews (fortnight break while participants conduct practice interviews)
Day 3 Friday – Interpreting Oral Histories
Day 4 Saturday – Making (Oral) Histories in Writing and other Media

Course fees:
$500 for Oral History Victoria and Oral History Australia members
$750 non-members
We anticipate participants will draw on funds from their own or departmental graduate research budgets. For students without access to research funds, bursaries might be
available from state and territory oral history associations. Oral History Victoria offers up to four bursaries for OHV members.
Details at https://oralhistoryvictoria.org.au/ (see the Events page for the course)

Concession fees apply to all OHA state and territory association members.

Registration here
Contact: for further information and to discuss the course, please contact: Alistair.Thomson@monash.edu

The annual meeting of the Oral History Association will be held from 14 to 17 October 2026 in Portland, Oregon, United States. The theme is ‘Landcapes of Memory’.

Call for Proposals

Our memories are shaped by the landscapes we inhabit—both real and imagined. These landscapes are shifting in the face of environmental change, political instability, and an ongoing sense of crisis. Ancient connections with the natural world are being severed, and people are displaced not only from this innate connection to the earth but also from familiar ways of living and relating to one another. As oral historians, we witness narrators’ struggles to imagine new identities within this changing ecology.

For the 2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, the Association invites contributions from around the world —from those working in academia, advocacy, education, and community-based practice—that speak to how people shape and are shaped by the landscapes they inhabit, traverse, defend, or are forced to leave behind. We welcome proposals that explore relationships to land, memory, and movement across shifting environmental, political, and cultural boundaries.

Find out more:

• https://oralhistory.org/2026-call-for-proposals/.

Dr Elaine Rabbit will deliver her nationally accredited oral history training program on 15-16 October in Belmont, Western Australia.

To register contact: Elaine Rabbitt elaine.rabbitt@gme.com.au

Who should attend?

Anyone interested in learning how to do professional oral history interviews: Beginners, intermediate and advance, those wanting to gain an accredited oral history qualification:

• artists
• musicians
• playwrights
• choreographers
• community members
• historians
• history teachers
• museum and interpretive centre staff
• librarians
• archivists and curators
• students
• academics
• organisations and individuals working to document significant sites
• aged care workers
• health workers
• ranger and land management groups
• language centres and any organisations or community working to preserve languages, stories and cultures
• tour guides
• archaeologists
• broadcasters and producers
• anyone working or wanting to work in the creative industries.

The nationally accredited oral history training will be delivered over two days by Dr Elaine Rabbitt. Elaine has developed the oral history training package for AHCOCM404 Record and document Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Community history, drawn from the wealth of oral history teaching materials that are available in Australia and overseas.

Too busy to treat yourself to a couple of days of oral history – think again? This is a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in the practicalities of oral history and gain nationally recognised certification. This is a stepping stone for further learning and possible employment opportunities.

The two workshops are practical and hands on. Students will learn how to use professional recording equipment and they can bring their own recording devices. Prior to the workshops students are asked to research and find an oral history and listen to it.

Professional oral historian and former President of Oral History WA, Jan McCahon Marshall will be a guest presenter at this year’s training.

WORKSHOP CONTENT

Workshop One – 6 hours

• Introduction to Oral History and getting started
• What is oral history?
• Guidelines for ethical practice: writing an invitation to participate and informed consent
• Preparing for the interview: interview techniques and questions,
• Cultural protocols

Workshop Two – 6 hours

• Recording stories and how to use a professional recorder
• The interview
• Practice recording: interviewing each other
• Concluding the interview
• After the interview – reflections, storing the interview and uses
• Summaries, transcriptions

Practical tasks to be completed to gain the qualification include:

• Complete assessment workbook containing activities including answering questions re ethical practice.
• Learn how to write a letter of invitation and informed consent to suit your project.
• Use professional recording equipment
• Complete an interview.
• Keep a reflective journal to evaluate the interview context.

Each student will be given individual feedback on their interview.

CERTIFICATION

Those who complete the workshop, an interview and their assessment workbooks, will be awarded their certificate issued by the Goolarri Media Enterprises (GME) Registered Training Organisation No.51278.

COURSE COSTS: $395 (incl. GST)

Oral History Australia members & students: $360 (incl. GST)

Includes enrolment fees, resources, participant handbook, and assessment.

Recognition of prior learning

If you have completed other oral history courses, workshops or interviews you can apply for ‘recognition of prior learning’ (RPL). RPL is a way of using your existing skills, knowledge and experience to gain your formal qualification. You will be required to meet the performance criteria for the unit of competency AHCOCM404 Record and document Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Community history. RPL cost: $240 incl. GST

First Friday of every month, 12noon. Join us online for a member sharing event. Hear what other members are doing, share your latest project, and get advice from the OHWA Committee and experienced practitioners. BYO lunch and a cuppa.

Email contact@oralhistorywa.org.au for the Teams link or to find out more details.

Host: Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips, OHWA President.

Alison is an experienced oral and public historian, and is senior lecturer in Community Development at Murdoch University where she teaches about the importance of storytelling in community building. In her oral history practice, she is particularly interested in the ways different kinds of interview prompts (photos, videos or personal archives, for example) impact on the ways people remember in interviews. Alison is currently working with community co-operative Dwellbeing Shieldfield (UK) to develop a community archive.

Presenters: Sarah Rood and Alistair Thomson

Dates: Saturday 14 November and Saturday 21 November

Time: 9:30am-4:00pm

Location: Online

Have you always wanted to learn how to create an oral history interview? Or do you have an interest in recording the memories of elders in your family or community?

Maybe you’re wondering whether or not to record remotely, or you’re thinking about conducting face-to-face interviews. Perhaps you’re a student starting an oral history project.

This popular Oral History Victoria two-day online training workshop is for anyone who would like to learn how to prepare, conduct, record and document an oral history interview. Facilitated by two of Australia’s most experienced oral history trainers, and using Zoom technology, you will learn and practice essential interview techniques and discuss important ethical issues.

After the first Saturday sessions, you will conduct your own oral history interview (remote recording or face-to-face), which will be a learning resource in the second Saturday sessions. The workshop will be limited to 18 participants to enable lively discussion and practical work in an online format. Participants will need a computer with Wi-Fi connection – the Zoom link will be provided, along with Zoom instructions.

Feedback from previous participants on this course:

‘The skills I learnt and the discussions that took place were invaluable’

‘I liked it that our activities really tested our comfort zones. It was just terrific.’

‘Al and Sarah are wonderful educators and facilitators!

‘A wonderful learning experience. I’ve definitely fallen in love with oral history too!’

‘I loved the course – learned so much on so many different levels, far more than I would have expected. Well done on awesome Zoom teaching.’

‘Thanks so much for providing us with such a great course. I have already promoted future courses to my friends.’

TRAINER PROFILES

Sarah Rood is a professional consulting historian who has been working in the field for the past 20 years. She has seen the uses and applications of oral history change

drastically. Motivated by a desire to help communicate the past and to help connect individuals and communities with history and identity Sarah has recorded countless

oral history interviews. Firmly believing that everyone has a story to tell, Sarah aims to work with people to record their stories in a way that both documents their

experiences and ensures that (with permission) it can be accessed by others in the future. Exploring the relationship between new technologies and oral histories has

become a particular area of interest for Sarah in recent years. Similarly, the interplay between the tangible and the intangible and how this plays out in oral history is a constant source of intrigue for Sarah.

Alistair Thomson, national award-winning teacher and now Emeritus Professor of History at Monash University, taught his first oral history workshop in 1985 at the

Wangaratta Centre for Continuing Education and has been teaching oral history in both community and academic settings ever since. Al’s oral history books

include: Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (1994), The Oral History Reader (2016), Ten Pound Poms: Australia’s Invisible Migrants (2005), Moving

Stories: an intimate history of four women across two countries (2011), Oral History and Photography (2011), Australian Lives: An Intimate History (2017), Fathering: An

Australian History (2025) and The Bloomsbury Oral History Handbook (2026).

Contact: Alistair.Thomson@monash.edu if you’d like to discuss the course.

TRAINING PROGRAM FORMAT

Timing: the workshop takes place over two consecutive Saturdays.

On each workshop day the session will go from 9.30am – 4 pm with a lunch break from 12 – 1 pm.

Book here.

Concession fees apply to all OHA state and territory association members.

The Oral History Society, United Kingdom, will hold its 2027 conference at the University of Essex, Colchester on 9-10 July 2027.

The theme is ‘Oral History and Listening‘.

Potential temes/topics include:

• Listening in the interview encounter
• The impact of listening
• Listening when documenting
• Listening to a body of interviews
• Listening across time
• Exploring the listening experience
• Listening to each other and the wider world.

The deadline for submission of proposals is Monday 25 January 2027. Find out more at: https://ohs.org.uk/2027-ohs-conference/.