Events

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.

Concession fees apply to all OHA state and territory association members.

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 21^st-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.

Concession fees apply to all OHA state and territory association members.

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.

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/.