Events

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/.

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.