The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming every aspect of our lives: home, work, school, socialising and leisure. In particular, social distancing requirements and travel restrictions have affected the research plans of many historians and oral historians are no exception. Some oral historians have begun or continued conducting remote interviewing, while others have preferred to postpone interviews until they can again be conducted face-to-face. While the pandemic has interrupted some research plans, for other researchers coronavirus is inserting itself into their work, as they begin studying the human effects of pandemic life or simply find that every interview begins with a discussion of life under lockdown.
For the upcoming 2020 issue of Oral History Australia Journal, we invite brief reports from oral historians on how coronavirus has affected your work. This may be 200 words on how plans have been disrupted or it may be 1000 words on a new project that has taken off because of the pandemic. Please send your ideas, queries and/or submissions to Joint Editors Skye Krichauff skye.krichauff@adelaide.edu.au and Carla Pascoe Leahy carla.pascoeleahy@unimelb.edu.au.
Submissions are due 29 June 2020.