As you can see from this newsletter, the IOHA News remains very active. A number of events have taken place over the past semester and many others will happen soon. Both North and South America continue to be the most active in organizing events related to oral history. Indeed, during 2011 and 2012 a variety of meetings and conferences took place in Mexico, Argentina and the United States. This is probably a sign of oral history’s development and maturity that our discipline has reached in those regions. In whatever case, we wish to congratulate New Zealand for its national conference and Brazil for having organized the First Health Oral History Seminar.

At the same time, we believe it is important to highlight the work, projects and research that is being carried in different parts of the world. We particularly wish to draw attention to the organization and of a new oral history network in Ireland and the international conference that will be held in Kilkenny in September 2011, which will coincide with celebrations of the city’s foundation. Equally, we wish to welcome the new oral history centre in Uzbekistan and the project that they have undertaken to reconstruct the history of the twentieth century through oral history.

From these pages we also would like to thank all of those who have helped make this edition possible. We especially wish to thank Anna Green and Lleana Gadea Rivas for their reviews of recently published books. Unquestionably, this dynamic helps us keep up to date and in shape.

If you have an oral history meeting planned, have attended an interesting conference, are beginning or finishing a noteworthy project, developing an archive or have found an interesting monograph or website please let us know. We depend on you to make to make this an effective medium for sharing information about oral history around the world.

Miren Llona (Spanish text) - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Christopher Paetzold (English text) - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Co-editors, IOHA News

Dear colleagues,

For the first time as a new president of IOHA I wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone and wish you success in your future endeavours, not only in our association but also in your personal and working life. Good luck and plenty of optimism in future years!

Once again (and for the last time) I would like to look back to recently finished 16th International Oral History Conference which took place in Prague on 7–11 July 2010. 503 delegates (including one day delegate) from 57 countries all over the world attended the conference. The congress was organised by IOHA in cooperation with the Czech Oral History Association, the Institute for Contemporary History Academy of Sciences Prague and Faculty of Humanities, Charles University.

The organization of the conference was successful and it did not face any serious difficulty. Indeed, the budget was sufficient and a small profit from MC was sent to the IOHA account (about 1750 Euro). During the pre-registration more than 700 papers were registered; 431 proposals (individual and panel) were accepted - 203 from Europe, 17 from Asia, 12 from Africa, 20 from Oceania, 182 from Americas (see general paper statistics). Only a small group of people from Asia and Africa visited the conference despite the favorable distance. On the other hand, the attendance from both Americas and Australia was quite high. The most visited panels were those dealing with memory of war conflicts, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, exile, migrations and theoretical, methodological and technical issues in oral history. One of the most attended panels was dealt with the future of oral history. Generally speaking, it is possible to claim that the topics of the conference shifted from technical issues (interview procedure, analysis and interpretation) towards more academic and historical issues (which can also be proven by the fact ten out the twelve new IOHA council members are professional historians. The conference was simultaneously translated by professional interpreters in three parallel sessions during the whole duration of the congress which had a positive impact on the mutual understanding of the delegates. The organizers and delegates had many friendly meetings with their colleagues all over the world and we are still receiving many positive reactions from them. I hope the conference lived up to the expectations of the delegates intellectually, organizationally and culturally.

I am also glad that we were able to elect new candidates for IOHA council in Prague. They are full of energy and equally have some previous experience with working with different organizations. From our first on-line meeting is obvious that we are going to be very good team.

In regards to my role as president, I have some ideas and I have chosen some priorities. I would like to see a larger integration of countries under-represented countries such as China and Russia as well as other states of Asia and Near East, Central and North Africa that have not had delegates as of yet. Communication with Chinese OH association and newly formed   Bulgarian and Polish association was started immediately after conference. I believe we should consider the possibility that next IOHA conference 2014 should be in Asia and take the necessary steps to achieve this.

As a base for communication, I believe that the IOHA website should be the principal venue for debate and discussion, as well as for sharing common achievements and information. The website opens possibilities for other uses, such as the creation of a database of abstract and reports from previous IOHA congresses in Sydney, Guadalajara and Prague).  This digest would help mutual communication, it would allow better and more detail summary regarding colleagues' specializations and interests. Such a service could be used as a base for forming common international research projects, as well as helping with citations, etc.

We should also consider creating a bilingual electronic registration system within our webpage similar to that of the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC). In future years, with this system will saved costs for recurrent creation of this essential tool and at the same time will be standardized the requirements for filling, necessary identification data, and so on. Similar registration system will be administered with local organizers IOHA conference.

As the new president of IOHA I wish to support the growing pains that the current academic platforms of our organization (Words and Silences and the Newsletter) are going through. In my opinion, these are essential for stimulating methodological and thematic debates as well as informing about oral history news, such as new IT technologies, archiving and declassifying interviews in web, etc.

Last, but not least, I want to dedicate my time and energy to the successful IOHA conference 2012 in Buenos Aires.

Again, I wish good luck to everyone and, at the same time, to the IOHA.

Mirek Vaněk This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
President, IOHA