Oral History - guide to resources: Northern Ireland

As part of a reconsideration of 1968 as a historic moment, this international project conducted oral history interviews with those involved as young activists. The project has a broad geographic scope, encompassing activists from across northern Europe, southern Europe, and the USSR. Oral recordings of the interviews, along with written transcripts, are available through an online password-protected database. A username and password will usually be issued on request to bone fide researchers with a research topic in mind.

Topics: Politics & Government

Keywords: 1968; protest; students; translations

This research project was established by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies in 2000 to record the experience of Hindus who migrated to Britain. The oral history interviews focussed on both the interviewee’s personal history and on his or her religious practices and beliefs. Interviews were conducted with members of Hindu communities from across Britain. The recordings and transcripts of 46 interviews are available online. The complete archive of over 300 interviews is accessible at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; migration; race; religion

This project aimed to explore changing financial management practices in working class homes within the city of Belfast. A series of oral history interviews recorded individual experiences of credit, debt and money management. The interviews adopted a life history approach, which enables the gender, generation, neighbourhood, occupation, income and religion of individual respondents to be considered alongside their personal and familial experiences of financial decision-making. The transcripts of 26 interviews, including two with licensed money lenders, are available online through the UK Data Service. Researchers must first sign into the UK Data Service using their institutional login and state their intended use of any material accessed.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; family; finance; gender; religion

The Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) has organised over 100 oral history ‘witness seminars’ since 1986. Witness seminars are group interviews that bring key participants to a particular event or policy together in front of an audience of expert academics and interested parties. The agreed transcripts from the majority of past seminars are now available to download from the site, along with expert introductions and additional background information. The past seminars are listed under five subject areas: Defence History, Diplomatic History, Economic History, Political History, and Science and Technology History. If a transcript is not yet currently available for download, please email Dr Michael Kandiah or Dr Virginia Preston.

Topics: Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: diplomacy; foreign policy; politics; science

The Listening Project is an ongoing project run in partnership by the BBC and the British Library. The project has requested people from across the country to submit an audio recording of a short, meaningful conversation held between two individuals. The recordings are being broadcast across BBC radio and archived by the British Library. A significant number, currently over 300, are also available to listen to through the BBC Radio 4 website. The conversations cover a wide range of topics including education, family, health, religion and war.

Topics: Arts & Culture; Education; People; War & Culture; Work

Keywords: education; family; healthcare; religion; sexuality; sport

The aim of this ongoing oral history project is to collect 100 interviews recording the memories and views of key figures in the Irish peace process since the 1960s. The decision was taken to embargo these interviews for up to 40 years in order to encourage frankness. A number of edited interviews with representatives from the women’s movement and education are, however, shortly to be made available through the website. The project website also provides an extensive list of links to previously conducted interviews regarding the peace process, which are now available online, under the Layers of Meaning Online Directory section.

Topics: Politics & Government; War & Conflict

Keywords: art; community; education; politics; sport; union; women

This resource provides online access to audio recordings from 87 life narrative oral history interviews with migrants and returnees from Ulster. The interviews were gathered during the course of two recent academic studies into migration: ‘Narratives of Migration and Return’, conducted from 2004 to 2006, and a follow on study ‘Northern Ireland Emigrant Narratives’ conducted from 2006 to 2008. The emphasis of the collection is on migration that took place during the 1970s, as this was the decade Ulster experienced its highest emigration rate, but migration from the 1930s through to the 1980s is also covered. The interviews are fully keyword searchable or browsable by interviewee gender, age group, religious denomination, birthplace, childhood residence, current residence, emigration destination, decade of emigration or decade of return.

Topics: People

Keywords: migration