Oral History and the digital transformation

The development of oral history has always been strongly influenced by technological developments. As a result, oral historians have often been technologically savvy and open to change. In my talk, I will discuss how approaches to interviews and demands on their accessibility are changing as a result of the increasing and increasingly taken-for-granted digitization of (historical) scholarship and research processes. It is notable that, at least in the German-speaking academic community, there is a growing interest in oral history interviews among those who do not specialize in this particular field. This is largely because such interviews can now be located and utilized far more effectively in digital format. What are the implications of this for the production of oral history sources, and for the lengthy and costly process of conducting interviews? What role do the long-standing and painstakingly compiled oral history archives play in this? Should interviews be regarded as a form of research data? In light of the growing availability and utilization of digitally recorded interviews, what factors need to be taken into account when interviews are available in digital format and employed in digital research?

All welcome to join this online seminar. Please register to receive the joining details: https://voices-unbound.eventbrite.co.uk

Voices unbound? Exploring new and/or possible directions in digital and experimental oral history

A lecture series co-organised by TU Darmstadt, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. The series is convened by Julianne Nyhan (TU Darmstadt), Andrew Flinn, Andreas Vlachidis, and Marco Humbel (UCL), Shih-Pei Chen (Max Planck Institute), and Gerben Zaagsma (C²DH), offering an important way of keeping up to date with the methodological and theoretical state of the art in digital oral history. We invited speakers to present work on recent technological developments that may hold promise for digital oral history. In this way, the seminar series appeals to (digital) oral historians, digital humanists and scholars of the history of information, memory and knowledge systems.