Oral history and activism - an on-line lunchtime seminar

• How does oral history help us to better understand activism?

• Can oral history contribute to activism?

Please join us for the first of two lunchtime oral history seminars* in October.

(Zoom details will be shared with attendees before the event)

Researcher Tionne Parris and researcher/activist Nandini Oza will introduce their work and respond to these questions individually and in dialogue. Participants will be invited to contribute to an online discussion that covers oral history theory and practice rooted in experience and reflections from different geographical and thematic contexts.

Tionne Parris is a historian currently working on her doctorate degree at the University of Hertfordshire. She specialises in the American Black Power movement and is particularly interested in the influence of Black Radical Women on Black Protest Movements between 1930 and 1970. She is one of the coordinators at the Young Historians Project (UK), who work to encourage the development of young historians of African and Caribbean heritage in Britain. Their recent projects have sought to better understand and raise public awareness of underrepresented Black histories, like the role of African women in the National Health Service (1930-2000) and the Black Liberation Front (1971-1993).

https://www.younghistoriansproject.org/ Twitter: @yhp_uk

younghistoriansproject@gmail.com

Twitter: @tionneparris

Nandini Oza is a human rights and ecological activist, and an oral historian. She has been a full-time activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a mass resistance movement against a mega dam on the river Narmada in western India, for over twelve years. Since 2004 she has recorded oral histories of prominent leaders and activists of the NBA, including many Adivasi women and men, and other natural resource dependent communities. She maintains a website and a YouTube channel on the oral histories of the Narmada struggle. She was President of Oral History Association of India (March 2020- March 2022) and is the author of Whither Justice: Stories of Women in Prison (2006), and Ladha Narmadecha (2017) translated into English in 2022 The Struggle for Namarda: an oral history of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave.

https://oralhistorynarmada.in/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbNcomqRyRdnPftZrbXH8eA https://twitter.com/OzaNandini

The Newcastle University Oral History Unit and Collective (NUOHUC) is directly involved in research and teaching on oral history and activism and has supported the Roma Stories Oral History Project. Unit staff with other colleagues in History, have designed and deliver a history undergraduate module Oral history and activism for Level 2 students. NUOHUC has been involved in a variety of research projects with activists and movements across the UK, for example: the Covid-19 and Mutual Aid project (Dr Alison Atkinson-Phillips and Silvie Fisch) and Andy Clark’s research and publications documenting the response of Scottish women to factory closure, particularly the wave of occupations that took place in 1981.

We hope to expand and enhance our thinking around the relationship between oral history and activism and the value of undertaking oral history with refugees and migrants, by listening to and dialoguing with other experts in these fields.

*The second seminar to be held on October 19th 1-2pm is on Oral history with refugees and migrants with Tania Gessi (Roma Support Group) and Nairy Abdel Shafy. Details here