Logan excursion, 2019 OHA Biennial Conference Brisbane- Beaconsfield excursion, 2022 OHA Biennial Conference, Launceston
- Fijian farewell, 2019 OHA Biennial Conference, Brisbane
Oral History Australia
(OHA) is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organisation committed to promoting the ethical practice of oral history in Australia and overseas. We recruit members through State associations that provide support and events.OHA has a passion for recorded life stories, especially from people and groups who are under-represented in the historical record, and for the difference oral history can make to understanding and changing our world.
We also produce an annual journal and biennial conference. Find out more.
OHA Biennial Conference
Next conference: 26-29 Nov 2026
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Watch this space – more details to come.
Latest news
CFP NOHANZ 2026
The National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) will hold its biennial conference from 18-20 September 2026 at the Tūranga…
Job opportunity
The Australian National University is looking for an oral historian to lead a project identifying and supporting oral history collections. The…
Word of Mouth – New issue
The Spring 2025 issue of the OHA SA/NT magazine Word of Mouth is now available. Highlights include: reports from OHA SA/NT…
Call for Papers – Journal 2026
Contributions for the peer review and reports sections of the 2026 issue of our journal Studies in Oral History are now being accepted.…
Upcoming events
March 2026
07mar10:00 am12:00 pmIntroduction to Oral HistoryOral History NSW online eventTRAINING
Event Details
In this introductory seminar, Oral History NSW Vice President Scott McKinnon will explore some of the key ideas behind oral history as a research methodology and will outline important steps
Event Details
In this introductory seminar, Oral History NSW Vice President Scott McKinnon will explore some of the key ideas behind oral history as a research methodology and will outline important steps in planning oral history projects, including tips on preparing for, undertaking and preserving interviews.
Visit the OHNSW website to register – https://www.oralhistorynsw.org.au/events/2026-intro-seminar-march#!event-register/2026/3/7/an-introduction-to-oral-history-key-principles-everyone-should-know.
Cost: OHA/OHNSW members: $20 Non-members: $30
Please note the seminar will not be recorded.
Time
Organizer
13mar9:30 am1:00 pmOral history for the future: preservation and accessibilityTRAINING
Event Details
Presenters: Alistair ThomsonDate: Friday 13 March, 2026Time: 9:30am-1:00pmOnlineIf you want to ensure your oral histories are likely to be accessible in 100 years or more, this is the workshop for you! This advanced
Event Details
Presenters: Alistair Thomson
Date: Friday 13 March, 2026
Time: 9:30am-1:00pm
Online
If you want to ensure your oral histories are likely to be accessible in 100 years or more, this is the workshop for you! This advanced course is for anyone holding or creating oral history interviews outside of major libraries and archives, including community projects and local history societies. It is arranged in three parts.
First: Documentation of oral history interviews and collections (covering electronic file management; post-interview summaries; transcription (pros, cons and tools); timed summaries; translation; and metadata).
Second: Rights – moral, ethical and legal (covering: informed consent, and why it’s important; gathering and recording consent; copyright; access and storage: now and into the future; editing interviews; and risk management involving sensitive topics, data security, privacy and legal considerations).
Third: Archive storage and accessibility (covering: places to keep your oral history collection nationally, state-based and locally; collection policies; how to approach a collecting institution; Victorian Collections options; and an archive checklist)
Combining expert advice, useful examples and resources, and group activities, this course was designed for Oral History Victoria by Way Back When Consulting Historians. OHV gratefully acknowledges the Local History Grants Program and Public Record Office Victoria, supported by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund, for the funds to enable the development of the training materials.
Book here.
Time
Organizer
May 2026
23may10:00 am4:00 pmWriting Oral History: Turning Talk into TextTRAINING
Event Details
Presenters: Alistair ThomsonDate: Saturday 23 May, 2026Time: 10:00am-4:00pmOnline – advanced course.In this audio-visual digital age, it’s easy to forget that oral historians often use interviews in written formats. This interactive online workshop will
Event Details
Presenters: Alistair Thomson
Date: Saturday 23 May, 2026
Time: 10:00am-4:00pm
Online – advanced course.
In this audio-visual digital age, it’s easy to forget that oral historians often use interviews in written formats. This interactive online workshop will focus on approaches and issues in creating text-based outputs from oral history interviews, using examples from Al’s oral history publications and from participants’ own work.
First, we’ll discuss the range of ways in which oral history interviews are used in text-based outputs: in books, journal articles, websites, exhibitions and other media. We will note how new technologies are enabling new types of production that combine text and audio (and audio-visuals), and the opportunities and challenges posed by 21st-century innovations.
Second, we’ll explore issues and approaches in creating verbatim and ‘poetic’ transcripts, we’ll review some basic guidelines and some useful software, and we’ll workshop one example for participant transcription and discussion.
Third, we’ll focus on approaches and issues in editing transcripts for publication, we’ll discuss editorial aims, processes and decisions, and we’ll workshop an example.
Fourth, we’ll consider different approaches to using oral history interviews in writing and explore ethical, aesthetic and interpretative issues in writing with oral history.
By the end of the day you will have enhanced your understanding and skills in writing with oral history.
Book here.
Time
Organizer
June 2026
29junAll Day03julAHA Conference 2026Changing Minds
Event Details
The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.The organising committee a welcome historians from around
Event Details
The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.
The organising committee a welcome historians from around Australia and the world to Sydney, on Dharug Country, to share their new research and engage one another on the pressing questions facing our discipline and our communities, under the theme ‘Changing Minds’.
Call for Papers
The capacity to ‘change one’s mind’ is a foundational premise in the discipline of history. Upon encountering evidence that disrupts our existing explanations, the story goes, we might adjust, rework or perhaps even overturn our interpretations. And yet, historians do not often describe how and why they have changed their minds. While we are comfortable tracing changes in historiography, it seems harder to narrate our own intellectual alterations or confess that we were once, perhaps, mistaken.
As historians, we also tend to be quite interested in how mentalities, attitudes, and beliefs change over time. Might there be a relationship to consider between how we narrate changes in ourselves as researchers and the changes we seek to explain? Perhaps a more honest account of our own attachments and preoccupations would help us to explain why some changes happen quickly, others take an age and some, though imagined and wished for, never seem to eventuate.
To consider how we might make space for, explain and even produce changes of heart and mind, the 2026 AHA annual meets at Macquarie University, on Dharug Country, in Sydney. The organisers welcome proposals for papers and panels on any geographical area, time period, field of history, or theoretical or conceptual aspects of history, especially those that consider changes of mind, whether historical or historiographic. The conference will also continue the tradition of hosting streams for various AHA-affiliated groups and sub-disciplinary themes.
Submissions
Submission deadline: 1 February 2026
Submissions for individual papers should be made via this online form.
Submissions for panels should be made via this online form.
Enquiries can be sent to aha2026@mq.edu.au
Time
Location
Macquarie University
July 2026
29junAll Day03julAHA Conference 2026Changing Minds
Event Details
The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.The organising committee a welcome historians from around
Event Details
The 2026 Australian Historical Association Conference will be hosted by Macquarie Unviesity in Sydney, New South Wales from 29 June to 3 July.
The organising committee a welcome historians from around Australia and the world to Sydney, on Dharug Country, to share their new research and engage one another on the pressing questions facing our discipline and our communities, under the theme ‘Changing Minds’.
Call for Papers
The capacity to ‘change one’s mind’ is a foundational premise in the discipline of history. Upon encountering evidence that disrupts our existing explanations, the story goes, we might adjust, rework or perhaps even overturn our interpretations. And yet, historians do not often describe how and why they have changed their minds. While we are comfortable tracing changes in historiography, it seems harder to narrate our own intellectual alterations or confess that we were once, perhaps, mistaken.
As historians, we also tend to be quite interested in how mentalities, attitudes, and beliefs change over time. Might there be a relationship to consider between how we narrate changes in ourselves as researchers and the changes we seek to explain? Perhaps a more honest account of our own attachments and preoccupations would help us to explain why some changes happen quickly, others take an age and some, though imagined and wished for, never seem to eventuate.
To consider how we might make space for, explain and even produce changes of heart and mind, the 2026 AHA annual meets at Macquarie University, on Dharug Country, in Sydney. The organisers welcome proposals for papers and panels on any geographical area, time period, field of history, or theoretical or conceptual aspects of history, especially those that consider changes of mind, whether historical or historiographic. The conference will also continue the tradition of hosting streams for various AHA-affiliated groups and sub-disciplinary themes.
Submissions
Submission deadline: 1 February 2026
Submissions for individual papers should be made via this online form.
Submissions for panels should be made via this online form.
Enquiries can be sent to aha2026@mq.edu.au
Time
Location
Macquarie University
September 2026
18sepAll Day20NOHANZ Conference 2026Tūranga | Places we belong
Event Details
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
Event Details
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.
Time
October 2026
14octAll DayOHA (USA) Annual Meeting 2026Landscapes of Memory
Event Details
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 ProposalsOur
Event Details
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:
Time
Organizer
November 2026
26novAll Day292026 OHA Biennial ConferenceSave the date
Event Details
Oral History Australia and Oral History Victoria will present the 2026 OHA Biennial Conference at Adelaide University from 26 to 29 November 2026.Further details coming soon.
Event Details
Oral History Australia and Oral History Victoria will present the 2026 OHA Biennial Conference at Adelaide University from 26 to 29 November 2026.
Further details coming soon.
Time
Location
Adelaide University