2024 OHA Biennial Conference
The Power of Oral History—Risks, Rewards & Possibilities
Presenters
Our conference traditionally attracts some of the most influential oral history practitioners and academics, not just in Australia, but the world.
This year we are delighted to welcome as our keynote speaker the legendary Alessandro Portelli whose address is titled ‘Bread and Labor: The Lost and Found Humanity of Giuseppe Di Porto, Auschwitz Survivor. A twice-told tale’ on Friday 22 November.
We are also excited to present a panel session with three commissioners of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. The session is titled ‘Truth-telling and Truth-receiving: Oral Testimony and the Yoorrook Justice Commission’. This session will be presented on Saturday 23 November.
Find out more about Alessandro Portelli, his address and the profiles of the Yoorrook Justice Commission speakers on this page.
Keynote: Alessandro Portelli
Over more than 50 years, Alessandro Portelli has been one of the most influential oral historians in the world. In Italy in 1972 he founded the Circolo Gianni Bosio, an activist collective dedicated to studying folklore, oral history, and people’s culture. He has served as Professor of American literature at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, as historical advisor to the mayor of Rome in the early 2000s, and as a founder of Rome’s House of History and Memory. His award-winning publications have transformed our understandings of memory, narrative and oral history, and about the relationships and politics of oral history, including: The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Form and Meaning in Oral History (1991), The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (2003) and They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (2010). In 2015 he was awarded the prestigious international Dan David Prize for his outstanding contribution to the study of history.
About the Portelli keynote
In a 2005 interview, Giuseppe Di Porto, an Auschwitz survivor, centres the story of his life on an episode. In the ‘demoralizing’ context of the death camp, where ‘bread was life’, he cannot bring himself to exact from a comrade the price of a ration of bread to which he would have been technically entitled for a service he had supposedly rendered him. This act, in which his conscious will was overcome by a higher, unknown power, helps him find the faith in himself that (along with his life-long training in hard labor) allows him to survive. It becomes the turning point that explains not only his camp experience but his entire life and identity. However, in a 1998 video interview for the Shoah Foundation, Di Porto does not mention this crucial episode at all. This difference illuminates a number of methodological questions in oral history: about testimony and narrative, video and audio, and space and proxemics (how spatial relationships affect communication) in the interview.
The first thing that makes oral history different … is that it tells us less about events than about their meaning.
Alessandro Portelli, 1979
Yoorrook Justice Commission panel session
Truth-telling and Truth-receiving: Oral Testimony and the Yoorrook Justice Commission
The Yoorrook Justice Commission is the first formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria.
Sue-Anne Hunter
Sue-Anne Hunter (MSW) is a proud Wurundjeri and Ngurai Illum Wurrung woman and the Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. She is an Adjunct Professor of Global and Engagement at Federation University and a member of the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice Advisory Board.
A child and family services practitioner by trade, Sue-Anne has over twenty years’ clinical experience responding to developmental, transgenerational and community trauma. She is widely recognised for developing rights-based, transformative practice responses that empower Aboriginal people to heal from the continuing effects and processes of colonisation.
Sue-Anne has extensive experience in the governance and the leadership of Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, and her expertise is regularly sought for government inquiries, parliamentary and ministerial advisory committees, academic research projects and media interviews.
Travis Lovett
Travis Lovett is a proud Kerrupmara/Gunditjmara man and Traditional Owner and the Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission who has spent his life advocating for truth and justice for First Peoples. He is passionate about practicing his Culture, working with Community and preserving Aboriginal languages.
Travis has held senior leadership roles in the Victorian Public Service, including as Executive Director and Acting Deputy Secretary, First Peoples State Relations, at the Department of Premier and Cabinet. He played key role in supporting Victoria to progress and implement Treaty and Truth telling.
He has also worked extensively supporting the rights of Traditional Owners across Victoria and in the protection of cultural heritage.
Prior to working for the Victorian Public Service, Travis also held senior roles with Aboriginal Victoria, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Court Services Victoria, and the Department of Justice.
Travis played a key role in the establishment and reform of the Magistrates’ and Children’s Koori Courts across the State of Victoria as the Manager of the Koori Courts.
In 2017, Travis was awarded the Young Indigenous Leader Scholarship by the Institute of Public Administration of Australia.
The Hon. Anthony North KC
The Hon. Anthony North KC has had a long and distinguished legal career spanning over 45 years.
Commissioner North is a former judge of the Federal Court (1995-2018). For the past four-and-a-half years he has been Chair of the Victorian Law Reform Commission.
During his time as a judge, Commissioner North’s main areas of work were cases about native title, refugee law, industrial law, and criminal appeals in the Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal.
Admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1976, Commissioner North was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1989. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws with Honours from the University of Melbourne and a Master of Laws from the University of London.