2019 OHA Biennnial Conference

Conference home

Through oral history recordings we hear the intimate stories of everyday lives, and we create histories that challenge orthodoxy and speak truth to power. Oral history drills beneath the big histories of state, society and politics, and illuminates ordinary
people’s extraordinary lives.

The 2019 Biennial Oral History Australia Conference takes place in our 40^th anniversary year. Oral History Queensland and Oral History Australia are presenting the conference, in partnership with State Library Queensland.

About the conference

Oral historians, in a variety of guises and combining age-old listening skills with dazzling new technologies, record intimate stories and create challenging histories. Our conference welcomes participants who use oral history in their work across
the many fields and disciplines that contribute to community, professional and academic histories. We welcome presenters from across Australia, across the Tasman and around the world. We invite proposals for individual presentations, workshops, performances
and thematic panels.

The main conference at State Library Queensland will be on Friday 11 October and Saturday 12 October 2019. Oral history training workshops will be held at a Brisbane venue on Thursday 10 October. Following the conference, on Sunday 13 October,
a selection of history walks and tours will introduce participants to the region’s rich and diverse communities of memory.

In keeping with 2019 as the Year of Indigenous Languages, a Keynote plenary panel will focus on Oral History, Oral Tradition and Indigenous History (with invited speakers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada).

Keynote speakers will include: Associate Professor Katrina Srigley from Nipissing University in Canada, co-editor of Beyond Women’s Words: feminisms and the practices of oral history in the twenty-first century (2018),
and currently co-researching Gaa Bi Kidwaad Maa Nbisiing: A-Kii Bemaadzijik, E-Niigannwang: The Stories of Nbisiing: the Land, the People, the Future; and Nbisiing Anishinabek Biimadiziwin: to understand the past and shape the
future, in partnership with Nipissing First Nation.