Deadlines for both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles for the 2018 issue of the Oral History Australia Journal have been extended to 30 June 2018.
Find out more on the Oral History Australia website .
Thank you for your support of Oral History Victoria this past year. The current membership year expires on 30 June and we invite all our members to renew for the next membership year – July 2018 to June 2019.
Renewing Online
Current members should have recently received a email but if not, simply follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/2018-2019-oral-history-victoria-membership-tickets-45999378379
Please note that renewals are due by 30 June 2018.
Letter from OHV President
The financial year might be drawing to a close but the opportunities available through Oral History Victoria in 2018 are just gathering pace. There’s plenty available to keep you sustained through the winter.
Already this year we have staged two workshops – one beginner-level and one advanced – and sent out a call for papers for our annual symposium.
Upcoming events include:
Tuesday 29 May – our next ‘skills exchange’ at The Moat, just near the State Library. This is an informal support group for discussing your oral history practice and projects. Come along to learn who’s doing what in oral history, talk through your project or research dilemmas and find out how others handle theirs, all in the good company of Al Thomson and colleagues
Sunday, 29 July – our annual symposium at Museo Italiano in Carlton. This year we’re exploring oral history and the emotions. More information is available at https://oralhistoryvictoria.org.au/events/category/2018-events/
Saturday 25 August – our second introductory workshop on oral history interviewing to be held at the Emerald Hill Heritage Centre, South Melbourne.
Saturday 1 September – our second advanced workshop for the year, also to be held at the Emerald Hill Heritage Centre, will deal with the interview relationship.
OHV is also going regional in the spring, with plans firming up for an introductory workshop in the Latrobe Valley, Gippsland in September/October.
And later in the year, we’ll be calling for entries to the Oral History Victoria Innovation Awards.
So to be sure to keep abreast of our full program and opportunities, now’s the time to renew your membership to Oral History Victoria for 2018-2019!
And beyond our programs, members have the opportunity to profile their work on the OHV website, in our regular Rewind email newsletter; to use the information and links to oral history advice and news from across Victoria, interstate and around the world; to receive the annual Oral History Australia journal, and to get updates on participating in the biennial national conference hosted by Oral History Australia.
But most importantly, members have the opportunity to join the OHV committee and shape oral history in Victoria. Whether you’re working with family or community, a professional historian or an academic, we’re interested in the oral history work you’re doing and your contribution to this community.
Look forward to seeing you at one of our many events.
Susan Faine
President, Oral History Victoria
Oral History Victoria conducted a member survey during April 2018 with the aim of better understanding our membership and its needs. Fifty-three members completed the survey.
The findings suggest that the majority of our members are female, metropolitan based, professional or education focussed (academic/student) and aged between 45 and 64. All OHV’s activities are appreciated; however, our workshops and events are the most valued. There was a strong appetite for OHV to offer more services – the most popular options centred around increasing skills (exchange activities both online and with guest speakers) and providing partnership and funding opportunities.
There were 23 comments. Most of them were positive with suggestions for future courses, more online content and further spending and support for our members (they have not been included here verbatim for privacy reasons).
Dear All,
Much has been going on in the Oral History world all over the country and in some cases time is short to take advantage of the possibilities in Victoria and elsewhere so good luck and apologies if you indeed find the time shorter than you would have liked.
Halina Nowicka,
Editor.
Happy laughs, quiet sobs, difficult silences and traumatic memories have always been the matter of Oral History. Emotions have played a key role in the theory and practice of Oral History. In recent years, the emotional and ‘affective’ turn in social sciences and humanities has also seen the emergence of the history of emotions as a burgeoning field of studies: how has our understanding of love, hatred, fear and many other emotions changed over time; and how have emotions influenced political events and impacted profound social and cultural changes in our society?
Oral History Victoria invites proposals for presentations that will allow us to showcase approaches to emotions in Oral History. Please send submissions to contact@oralhistoryvictoria.org.au by 11 May 2018. Be sure to include your name, organization (if applicable), contact phone number and email, plus a 100-word abstract and a one sentence bio. Please also describe the type of presentation you propose, which might be a 20 minute talk, a 5 minute ‘lightning presentation’, a workshop activity, a poster presentation or a thematic panel.
Do you have an exciting oral history project you’re working on that you’d like to share with us? We’re looking for presenters of all varieties – community and professional historians, students, academics – and at all stages of their careers. We welcome proposals for different types of presentations – see list below.
Themes explored may include:
Submission deadline: 11 May 2018
The symposium will be held at CO.AS.IT – Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton on the 29th July 2018
OHV members meet on Tuesdays (every eight weeks or so) to discuss their oral history project challenges and successes with other oral historians. The exact dates are posted once confirmed.
The next “Oral History Victoria Ideas and Skills Exchange” will be held on Tuesday 29th of May, 5.30-6.30 at The Moat cafe bar (176 Little Lonsdale St, near the State Library). With facilitation by Oral History Australia President, Al Thomson, this is an opportunity for members to come along and share current or prospective oral history projects and get advice about on challenges being faced.
Come and join us for an informal chat and a drink. Just turn up at the Moat on the day and ask for ‘the History Group’ (at our first successful gathering in May 2017 the Moat staff got a bit confused about the difference between oral history and orthodontists!).
We are excited to announce our 2018 offering in our advanced online oral history workshop series, Sharpen Your Skills: Advanced E-Workshops. “Digital Tools for Oral History” will focus on a selection of innovative options and applications available to the twenty-first century oral historian. BUIOH Director Stephen Sloan and Senior Editor/Collection Manager Steven Sielaff will discuss software and web platforms (most of which are free/open source!) that will enable you to accomplish and enhance your project goals of preservation, access, curation, and dissemination. This workshop is be a single three-hour session on May 23 from 10:00am to 1:00pm CDT and costs $75.
To register for this workshop, follow this link: https://www.baylor.edu/oralhistory/index.php?id=936083
In February 2018, four Behind the Wire’s films—featuring Behrouz Boochani, Hani Abdile, Munjed Al Muderis and Jamila Jafari—were projected on the facade of the National Gallery of Victoria International in Melbourne. The films were shown on a loop from dusk until dawn.
The work was a co-production of Behind the Wire and DAE White Night. View the video by following this link: https://youtu.be/UGWEGrchMLU
Behind the Wire is an oral history project about Australian immigration detention, comprising a book, podcast and exhibition. On 31st May 2018, the exhibition – Stories From Detention – will open at Gee Lee Wik Doleen Gallery, in Craigieburn. Then in Dandenong in October.
For more information, see http://behindthewire.org.au/exhibition/
We are also pleased to announce that the $5000 award has been renamed the Victorian Premier’s History Award.
The Victorian Community History Awards recognise excellence in historical method: the award categories acknowledge that history can be told in a variety of formats with the aim of reaching and enriching all Victorians. The Victorian Community History Awards have been held since 1999, and are organised by Royal Historical Society of Victoria in cooperation with the Public Record Office Victoria.
Thank you to all who submitted works for the 2017 Victorian Community History Awards. Please access the award booklet:
2017 Victorian Community History Award Winners
2017 Victorian Community History Awards – List of Entrants
To find out about previous winners of the VCHA visit the Past VCHA Winners page.
Keep an eye on this page or contact the Royal Historical Society of Victoria office@historyvictoria.org.au for details of our 2018 Victorian Community History Awards.
Stories of the 2017 Victorian Community History Award Winners
The RHSV is currently publishing, in our eBulletin, a series of articles by Paul Sandringham profiling the 2017 winners of the VCHA. They are great stories and well-worth reading. As the stories are published we will also upload them to this website with a link from this page.
http://www.historyvictoria.org.au/programs/victorian-community-history-awards/past-vcha-winners
A Crowd Funding Campaign to Save Women’s Stories:
A little bit of context
The activism of women has shaped our civil society, building trade unions and arguing for the wages and conditions we enjoy today (like maternity leave). We live in a time where women are playing an increasingly influential role. But the recorded history of the Australian union movement has been disproportionately dominated by the stories and personal histories of union men.
But there’s a problem
Countless women in the union movement have been instrumental in leading campaigns and pushing (often unpopular) issues, and their stories aren’t being told—their contributions have been lost in history. We aim to correct this imbalance!
Here’s what we’re doing about it
We plan to seek out 50 Australian union women’s stories (from a wide range of backgrounds and locations), record them in their own words via face-to-face interviews and add them to our website, where the online archive will be free and accessible to all.
By turning individual, personal memories into a shared collection, we will ensure these women’s stories are remembered and indelibly recorded in history.
We have all the equipment we need, and our experienced interviewers/historians are primed and ready to go. We even have our list of interviewees all teed up. Our next step is to raise the funds needed for travel costs to get us around Australia to meet these inspiring women and capture their voices.
You can join us
We need your help to get us on the road by raising $12,000. Let’s come together to save these stories and make sure women’s voices are heard.
Whether you can afford $25 or $100 or even just the amount you save from skipping a cup of coffee or two this week, every little bit will help us on our way!
Your donations will go to directly covering the practical costs required to preserve these stories.
How will your $$$ help?
The average cost to travel to, stay nearby, interview and audio record one woman trade unionist’s story, to transcribe the interview—making it accessible for people with disabilites—edit the audio recording, and add it to our web archive = $900!
Contact: https://chuffed.org/project/save-womens-stories#
Jan 28, 2018 |
The 2017 Oral History Australia journal is now available on the national website from a secure, member-only access page.
If you are an OHV member you should have by now received the login instructions in an email from branch secretary Ken Berryman. The 2016 journal was the last to be published in printed form. From 2017 onwards the journal is being published in a digital format only.
For further information: