The Bloomsbury Handbook of Oral History

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Oral History is a comprehensive examination of oral history which addresses a wide range of practitioners, from beginning students to graduate students and established scholars, community and freelance practitioners in the field, and those from other fields and disciplines interested in oral history. The purpose of the book is to provide a broad range of readers with:

* An advanced introduction into and overview of the field;
* Cutting-edge reflections on core themes in the field; and
* Global comparative perspectives on oral history theory and practice

The Handbook is arranged in five thematic Parts: Creating Interviews, Interpreting Oral Histories, Making Histories, Advocacy & Empowerment, and Big Questions & Future Directions. Each chapter documents the state-of-the-art in a particular subject area and surveys the international historiography and current debates. Each chapter concludes with a brief outlook of potential future developments in the field.

With chapter authors from every region of the oral history world - North America, South America, Oceania, Africa, Asia and Europe - and each author making use of examples and scholarship from across the global field of oral history, this volume represents the first truly international handbook of oral history.

Alexander Freund is Professor of History and holds the Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. He co-founded the UWinnipeg Oral History Centre, has been active in the International Oral History Association and several national oral history associations. He has published widely in oral history and is the author of Being German-Canadian: History, Memory, and Generations (2021).

Erin Jessee is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow, UK, where she works across the program’s research streams in oral history, war studies, gender history, and global history. She has fifteen years of experience working in Rwanda, among other conflict-affected contexts, and is the author of Negotiating Genocide in Rwanda (2017). More recently, she has begun focusing on early Rwandan history and cultural heritage studies, and has co-authored an oral history-based graphic novel, Nyiragitwa, among other publications.

Alistair Thomson is Professor of History at Monash University, Australia and President of Oral History Australia. He previously served as President of the International Oral History Association (2006-08) and editor of the British journal Oral History (1991-2007). His oral history books include: Anzac Memories (1994 and 2013), The Oral History Reader (1998, 2006 and 2015 with Robert Perks), Ten Pound Poms (2005, with Jim Hammerton), Moving Stories: an intimate history of four women across two countries (2011), Oral History and Photography (2011, with Alexander Freund), and Australian Lives: An Intimate History (2017, with Anisa Puri).