IOHA Newsletter

From the President

When I wrote a report for the last IOHA newsletter I was still working as an oral historian and adult educator in England. Since then, I’ve moved to a new job in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University in Australia. For me this is coming home after 24 years away from Australia; for my British family this is emigration and like many British immigrants before them they are finding Australia very familiar but awfully strange. My respect for all the migrants I have interviewed over the years has increased enormously, as I realise at first hand that migration is a tremendously challenging learning experience.

Just before I left England I was fortunate to attend two European oral history conferences. In March I joined the first national conference of the Italian Oral History Society in Rome. Italy has produced some of the most important theoretical work in oral history – most notably the writings of Luisa Passerini and Sandro Portelli – but oral historians have not always been supported by Italian universities.Read more...