My interest in oral history was sparked by a six-month sabbatical in Nicaragua in 1992 where I participated in the III Continental Encounter in Managua, part of the continental-wide campaign to commemorate 500 years of indigenous, black, and grassroots resistance to colonialism. As a volunteer translator at the conference, I worked with activists from across the Americas and heard and began reading some of their powerful testimonies.
Fast forward six years to my move from the University of Birmingham to London Guildhall University. In my new post, I began working with Jenny Harding on a number of community-based oral history projects and was introduced to the Oral History Society. I was a member of the organising team for the Society’s annual conferences at London Guildhall University in 2001 and then at London Metropolitan University in 2008 and more recently for the conference on ‘Home’ in 2022.
All three had a community theme and were unlike any other academic conferences I’d attended, attracting as they did a diverse mix of participants, including those from community organisations and projects, museums and libraries as well as academics. Moreover, the environments were congenial and collegial which made possible a series of open and lively debates, no doubt fuelled by a strong and shared sense of commitment to making and collecting oral histories.
In 2015, I left behind my full-time managerial post at London Metropolitan University in part to give myself more time to my continuing work on community-based oral history projects. Hence in 2017, when I was invited to apply for the Chair of the Society, I put my misgivings about chairing and attending yet more meetings to one side as the opportunity to work more closely with the OHS was just too good to decline. What I had not fully anticipated at the time of my appointment and what, I must say, has sustained and inspired me over the last six years have been the commitment and dedication of our trustees and volunteers. I’m constantly taken aback by our remarkable members, so many of whom have dedicated their time, effort and expertise to the Society and to the wider oral history movement – in some cases over many years. They have inspired and sustained my commitment to the principle of recording first-hand accounts of people whose voices go un- or misrepresented in the media, politics and academic writing.
