Events

The 22nd International Oral History Association (IOHA) Conference is scheduled for Rio de Janiero, Brazil from 25-28 July 2023. The host is the School of Social Sciences of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, the Center for Research and Documentation of Contemporary Brazilian History (FGV CPDOC).

The theme of the conference is Oral History in a Digital and Audiovisual World.

Twenty-five years after hosting the 10th International Oral History Conference, in June 1998 in Rio de Janeiro, FGV CPDOC once again hosts the world’s most important meeting of the Oral History community. If back in 1998, a context during which a South American country held the event for the first time, a number of concerns specific to the turn of the millennium were posed to congress participants, we can ask: what about oral history in the present time?

Updating this question more than ten years later, we realize that digital and audiovisual technologies impact and permeate oral history debates around the world. The use of video capture in interviews, documentary production and the potentialities of the digital and the challenges regarding its preservation are some of the concerns we have noticed in conferences and recent oral history projects. Still, the use of digital technologies and videoconference tools in the production of interviews has been employed, with parsimony, since the 2010s.

Find out more about the conference at: https://eventos.fgv.br/en/22nd-ioha-international-conference.

See the Call for Work Presentations and Workshop Proposals – https://eventos.fgv.br/en/22nd-ioha-international-conferences/submission. Deadline for proposal submissions – 1 November 2022.

The 41st Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference, will be hosted by the Australian Catholic University on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne from 3 to 6 July 2023. The theme is ‘Milestones’.

About the conference

The year 1973 was a big one. Australia granted diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China, the Sydney Opera House opened its doors, and the White Australia Policy was declared ‘buried’. Globally, the United Kingdom joined the European Union, Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s Asian population, and the oil crisis engulfed the world. It also marked the year that Australian historians first formed a professional organisation. Much of course remains unfinished: Indigenous peoples’ struggles for land rights and sovereignty, women’s demands for an end to the unspoken violence of male power, and of course, the necessity of a liveable human environment. We have chosen the theme of ‘Milestones’ to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Australian Historical Association, and to encourage reflection: on the historical profession in Australia, how far the nation has come, and the many things it still has to deliver. But equally, we encourage participants working in any field of history to challenge easy answers offered by the comforts of teleology. Milestones mark progress towards a predestined goal, after all, and assumptions around progress and improvement were central to the colonial enterprise. Milestones can conceal as much as they illuminate, and our experiences of the ongoing pandemic render strange any assumption of time moving at one set speed. Hosted by Australian Catholic University on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, this conference will be an opportunity to take stock of what has been, interrogate the place of historical knowledge and teaching in contemporary society, and ponder potential futures.

Deadline for proposals

Submissions have now closed and authors will be contacted some time in mid-March 2023.

Links

Go to the conference website for further information.

International Symposium: The Life Story in Oral History Practice at the British Library on Friday 30 June and Saturday 1 July. Booking link and full program available at:

https://www.bl.uk/events/the-life-story-in-oral-history-practice-a-two-day-international-symposium.

Attendance for the whole event is £45, with day passes available too.

Organisers promise innovative speakers from across the globe who will reflect on all aspects of life story interviewing, including Alexander Freund, Indira Chowdhury, Alistair Thomson, Doug Boyd, Wendy Rickard, Rob Perks and Don Ritchie. The special guest on Saturday 1 July is celebrated artist and curator Lubaina Himid, to discuss her life story recording for Artists’ Lives.

The event will debate oral history practice, research and the impact of new technology. It will also feature the launch of an exciting new website based on oral history: ‘Discovering Science’. The event is open to all, from newcomers to oral history to the most experienced life story practitioners, historians, writers, archivists and curators. We hope to see you there!

The Professional Historians Australia will hold its national conference in Adelaide, South Australia on 16 and 17 September 2023.

The theme of the conference will be Other Histories: Other Audiences. The aim is to showcase the diversity of work undertaken by professional historians and explore challenges confronting them as they work to contracts with clients and in areas beyond the academy: work frequently extends from the concept stage through to production in a variety of formats.

The South Australian PHA organising committee will review and select papers. Places in the conference program are limited. Those who have papers accepted will be notified by the end of April.

All speakers — except keynote speakers — will be required to cover the cost of conference registration and accommodation.

Program details will be available mid-year when bookings will open.

The organisers intend offering workshops on the Friday prior to the conference for early attendees, and will provide the opportunity for appropriate site visits afterwards. There will be an informal dinner on the Friday evening and a formal conference dinner with a guest speaker on the Saturday evening.

The PHA is looking for lively audiences with the chance to network in Adelaide but will be also offering a streaming service for those unable to attend in person.

Call for papers:

Member of Australia’s professional historians’ associations are invited to submit proposals for papers to be delivered at the forthcoming national conference in Adelaide on 16 and 17 September 2023.

Deadline for conference paper proposals extended from 3 April  to 8 May 2023.

The annual meeting of the Oral History Association will be held from 18-21 October 2023 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

Oral history is the oldest form of education. For its 2023 annual meeting, the Oral History Association seeks to convene a variety of shared experiences that return the field’s consciousness to its most basic and practical roots of dialogical teaching and learning. The politics of education today are contentious, to say the least. Stories of educators being silenced have become alarmingly commonplace, and the pandemic has driven many teachers, especially secondary level, out of the classroom altogether. At the same time, however, educators have been proving their resilience and capacity for innovation. Likewise, as a field, oral history is undergoing a paradigm shift towards radical inclusivity. In this transitional moment, we hope to find new possibilities, generate new approaches, and recall and refurbish the fundamentally humanistic impulse of oral history as/and education.

The 2023 OHA meeting will provoke many generative discussions about the fundamental roles that oral history can play in educational processes, and the ways critical pedagogy can inform oral history practice. What can the spirit and methods of oral history contribute to modern-day educational endeavors, at all levels? How might a learner’s life be changed by an assignment of oral history work in college, high school, middle school, elementary school, or even for adult learners outside the classroom? How do we honor and maximize the educational potential of the oral history encounter, for both participants and audience members?

Find out more:

• Call for Proposals
• Oral History Association website