Oral History - guide to resources: People (N-Z)

‘Observing the 80s’ makes available online a number of digitised archival holdings, which relate to the 1980s, from both Mass Observation and the British Library Oral History Collections. The aim of bringing these collections together in an accessible format is to stimulate academic research that spans current approaches to the decade, whilst also encouraging the collections’ use by a wide range of subject disciplines. From the Mass Observation collections, written responses from across the decade by 23 men and women, from a variety of social backgrounds and ages, were chosen for digitisation. The entire audio recordings of 26 interviews from the British Library Oral History Collections were also selected for digitisation.

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

Keywords: finance; healthcare; union

In 2000-2003, the Feminist Archive South conducted a large oral history project that collected the personal memories of women who were involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Bristol. Visit this blog to find out more about the project and download excerpts and summaries from the interviews.

Topics: People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; politics; women

The full transcripts and summaries of five oral history interviews exploring the lives and careers of a number of pioneers of social research are accessible online through the UK data service. The interviewees include Mildred Blaxter, Leonore Davidoff, Ray Pahl, Paul Thompson and Peter Townsend. A Pioneers of Qualitative Research website was also created in the course of the project, which hosts audio and written extracts from the interviews that can be browsed by theme. The themes include academic discipline, early influences, research methods and women in academia. To access the full data set it is first necessary to sign into the UK data service using your institutional login.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Education; People; Work

Keywords: anthropology; sociology; women

This project, produced by Rowan Arts and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Islington Council, used oral history to explore the social and cultural importance of Ironmonger Row Baths and its surrounding area in south Islington. The project website, produced in 2012, provides online access to 65 short audio and transcribed extracts from the interviews.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: community; leisure; sport

Refugee Voices is a collection of 150 filmed interviews with Jewish survivors and refugees from Nazism who came to live in Britain. All the interviews in the collection have been transcribed with time-codes and are searchable via a comprehensive collection database. One of the interviews is accessible online via a password protected section of the website. Please contact the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) for password information.

Topics: People; War & Conflict

Keywords: Holocaust; Jews; migration; refugees; WWII

This project recorded oral history interviews with women at the forefront of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Extracts from the interviews have been arranged by theme and are available to read or listen to through the project website. The chosen themes are: Family and Children; Bodies, Minds and Spirits; Sex, Love and Friendship; Race, Place and Nation; Education; Equality and Work; Activism; Politics and Legislation; Changing Cultures and the Arts; and Who We Were, Who We Are. The complete 60 audio interviews and verbatim transcripts are only accessible onsite at the British Library, but extensive content summaries of many of the interviews are available through the British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: education; feminism; politics; race; women

This archive consists of over 500 recordings of Somerset Life made since the 1970s by local historian Ann Heeley and a variety of other individuals and local history groups. A short audio clip from each recording is available to download from the website. The complete recordings are available to listen to at the Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton or the Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; WWI; WWII

This resource provides online access to large portions of oral history and other sound recordings held by The Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. The list of interviews is arranged alphabetically by interviewee name. The interview transcripts have also been indexed making them keyword searchable. The collection of interviews, captured in India, the U.K. and the USA, is very wide ranging and includes details of the lives and careers of members of the British Army based in India. A small collection of recordings of music and unusual languages is also accessible online.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: colonialism; education; industry; journalism; language; missionary; music; politics; women

This was part of a broader project to create a digital archive of experiences, memories and reflections about one of London’s most famous streets, the Strand. For the oral history strand of this project students and staff in the English Department at King’s College London conducted interviews with Strand workers and residents. They then turned these interviews into life writing. Some examples of their efforts, which include audio recordings from the interviews, are available on the Strandlines digital community website.

Topics: Education; People; Work

Keywords: community

This is a school run project which began from a desire to record the experiences of individuals who attended the school’s Veterans’ Day in 2008. The complete video recordings of 43 oral history interviews are now available to watch online. The interviews are divided into two sections. The first section is on ‘The Second World War 1939-45’ and includes interviews with members of the fighting forces, with individuals employed as Land Girls, Bevin Boys and in the ATS, and also with individuals who experienced the war in Germany or were affected by the Holocaust. The second section of interviews on ‘Britain and the world 1945-’ covers a wide variety of subjects including the Korean War, sport, science and political involvement.

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

Keywords: Holocaust; migration; mining; military_history; refugees; sport; WWII

This website provides the compete interview transcripts and summaries of 50 oral history interviews conducted between 1999 and 2001 with users or former users of the British mental healthcare system. The interviews were designed to capture the memories and experiences of those who lived in asylum based hospital institutions between the 1930s and 1985, before these began to be closed and replaced with different models of treatment. The website allows you to search the complete interview transcripts by keyword or browse them by category. A selection of video excerpts from the interviews is available online, and the complete set is accessible to view by appointment at the British Library, St Pancras, where it is archived as part of the Life Story Collection.

Topics: Science & Medicine; People

Keywords: healthcare; medicine

This oral history project has worked with volunteers from five children’s communities to discover and record the histories of individuals and communities involved in residential therapeutic child care ‘for traumatised, deprived, and delinquent children and young people’ between 1930 and 1980. Recordings from some of these interviews are accessible from the resources section of the website.

Topics: Education, People

Keywords: childhood; healthcare

This one-year project conducted in 2012 worked closely with the Tamil Community Centre in Hounslow to record the memories of Sri Lankan Tamils living in London, particularly those with links to West London and the Hounslow area. 15 life story interviews, along with 30 shorter interviews were collected as part of the project. Edited videos of 13 of the interviews are available to view online and transcribed extracts from all the interviews can be read online or in a downloadable book created as part of the project. The interview extracts are arranged under seven key themes: Early Life in Sri Lanka, Layers of Belonging, Politics & the Nation-State, Troubles, Leaving & Arrival, Transitions, and Home.

Topics: People

Keywords: community; migration

This website is the result of a collaborative project to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online thousands of Gaelic and Scots recordings held by the School of Scottish Studies (University of Edinburgh), BBC Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland. Over 30,000 oral recordings of stories, songs, music, poetry, history, traditions and other information are available to listen to online. It is possible to search the recordings by keyword or browse them by Scottish county.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; People

Keywords: folktales; Gaelic; music; poetry; songs; stories

This website, initiated by a Wellcome Trust funded research project, has collected together a number of oral histories from lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have undergone therapy in an attempt to make them heterosexual. Interviews with professionals who developed and conducted such treatments have also been collected. 26 of the most revealing narratives that arose from the research are available to read online through the Narratives section of the website (16 are from patients and 10 from professionals). It is also possible to read and listen to views about such treatments on the Interviews page.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine

Keywords: homosexuality; medicine; sexuality

The UK Data Service provides online access to a wide range of qualitative data sets, including oral history resources. The collections are searchable by keyword. Researchers must register with the UK Data Service and state their intended purpose for any data accessed.

Topics: Education; People; Politics & Government; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal

This project sought to record the experiences of those involved in British Alternative Theatre, from 1968 to 1988, within the context of their life histories. Some of the companies involved were among the first Black, Asian, lesbian, gay, women’s, disabled, political, experimental, TIE and community-based theatre groups seen in Britain. Short audio and video extracts from the interviews are accessible online, alongside a short biography of each interviewee. DVDs of the full recordings have been deposited with the British Library Sound Archive, the V&A Theatre Collections and Sheffield University. Contact the depositories directly if you wish to view or listen to the complete interviews.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: community; disability; homosexuality; politics; theatre

This project, funded by the University of Huddersfield, has recorded oral reminiscences relating to the Rugby League community in West Yorkshire. Audio extracts from 26 interviews with players, officials and spectators of Rugby League are available to listen to online. The website also makes accessible online a number of oral history interviews conducted as part of the ‘Black and Minority Ethnic Involvement in Rugby League Project’. This project saw pupils at the Huddersfield Giant Study Centre interview Huddersfield Giants players and staff from black and minority ethnic backgrounds about their lives and rugby league careers.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People

Keywords: rugby; sport

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

This project has been interviewing individuals in Camarthenshire since 2003 about the social and economic changes and influences that have affected agriculture and rural society in Wales since 1947. Short recorded extracts of five interviews conducted in English and three conducted in Welsh are currently available to listen to online and the complete audio recordings will be archived at the Museum of Welsh Life, St. Fagan’s, and in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; community; Welsh

The Wild Rose Heritage and Arts community group, based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, first began by interviewing elderly residents about their experiences growing up in the local valleys. Since then the project has expanded and oral history interviews have been conducted with residents of all ages to explore how people are changed by the places in which they live and work. The complete audio recordings and transcripts of approximately 130 interviews are currently available to access through the site.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: agriculture; childhood; community; WWII

The TUC has produced a series of films containing oral history interviews with women and union representatives involved in major cases in the fight for equal pay since 1968. They are available to watch online through this website.

Topics: People; Politics & Government; Work

Keywords: union; women

This project, launched in 2011, documents feminist music-making from the 1970s and 1980s, which formed part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Information about individual bands and musicians is gathered under their names and listed alphabetically. Oral history interviews are included for some entries alongside photographs, videos, recordings, gig lists, lyrics and musical scores, press clippings, flyers, posters, weblinks and manifestos.

Topics: Arts & Culture; People; Politics & Government

Keywords: feminism; gender; music; women

This project, launched in 2000, represents the oral history strand of a research initiative entitled 'Women and Irish Society' run by University College Cork. The project interviewed women about their experiences of paid work, family life and schooling in the Munster counties of Cork, Kerry and Limerick during the period from 1936 to 1960. The project sought to explore how women in Munster experienced or reacted to prevailing social, cultural and legal definitions of women as home-based workers. The audio recordings of 41 individual interviews are currently available to read online, and short audio clips of the interviews are also arranged by category.

Topics: People; Work

Keywords: education; family; gender; women

Although not oral history, this resource provides online access to thousands of written personal testimonies about all aspects of World War Two.

Topics: People; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict

Keywords: bombing; intelligence; military history; Navy; POW; propaganda; RAF; women; WWII

YouTube provides access to a large quantity of resources, both oral history interviews and information videos on the conduct and practice of oral history. Some organisations, archives and oral history projects have their own YouTube channels.

Topics: Anthropology & Folklore; Arts & Culture; Education; People; Politics & Government; Science & Medicine; War & Conflict; Work

Keywords: portal