Testimonies & Oral History

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Oral Histories of Genocide in Bosnia, Indonesia, and Rwanda: Symbolic Violence and Social Death

Erin Jessee, Annie Pohlman

Oxford: Oxford University Press (2026), 408 pp.

"Grounded in extensive oral historical, archival, and ethnographic research in the aftermaths of the Bosnian (1992-95), Indonesian (1965-66), and Rwandan (1994) genocides, this book investigates the symbolic meanings associated with spectacular forms of torture, murder, and mutilation that perpetrat ... more

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Handbook of Global Oral History
Deep Insights

Mark Cave, Selma Leydesdorff (eds.)

Leiden: Brill (2026), x, 699 pp.

"The Handbook of Global Oral History inspires the reader to be more open in their conception of what oral history is and how it is applied within a variety of disciplines to unlock meaning in human experience. The book brings together scholars from around the world in the areas ranging from memory s ... more

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Story Work for a Just Future: Exploring the Plurality of Knowledge and Method within the Digital Storytelling Community

Antonia Liguori, Philippa Rappoport, Daniela Gachago (eds.)

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press (2025), xiii, 227 pp.

"[...] new digital formats require people to craft their stories in new ways while capturing the emotion, nuance, and themes of what they remember and what they believe to be significant. They must learn through reflection, questioning, consideration, trial, revision, and feedback—and chapters in ... the book highlight efforts like workshopping at Berkeley’s StoryCenter, the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab, and elsewhere to give people a facility with digital technology to enable them to tell their stories. This is quite a transformation when one considers that for most of recent history the ability to disseminate stories was in the hands of those who controlled the means of story production—publishers, radio stations, and music, television, and movie companies. Now, with widespread digital access, anyone can, at least theoretically, become their own publisher, their own media company, their own distribution center. The locus of creativity and production does not have to be a Hollywood lot or a music studio—it can be, as illustrated herein, a community center, kitchen table, shelter, clinic, library, or school. The democratization of the production process means access to and participation in a much larger civic space. The purpose of Digital Storytelling exemplified in this collection of case studies and examples is not propagandistic or about spreading misinformation and distrust that nefariously aim to destabilize and even undermine societies. Nor is it about somehow imitating human storytelling by using artificial intelligence to entertain and intrigue audiences. Rather it is about encouraging people to tell their story and thus participate in the civic life of their community, group, nation, and the world. It is about their active, vital role in contributing to a larger good that they may enhance, enlarge, or elucidate by fashioning their experiences and lessons into a receivable format. As is apparent throughout the volume’s project descriptions and free-flowing conversations, Digital Storytelling is young enough that it retains an emergent quality characteristic of a growing form of cultural creativity and expression. Given that digital media will be with us for a long time, one would expect Digital Storytelling to branch out in an increasing diversity of ways, forms, and contexts. And as it grows and diversifies, one would expect its challenges—matters of storyteller privacy and discretion, thresholds of individual and community participation in securing resources and facilities, the underpreparation of participants and the overfacilitation of guides and mentors, limits of copyright and the fair use of digital components, the ethics of dissemination and reactions to reception—to also be addressed in a variety of ways." (Foreword, pages vii-viii) more

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La historia oral en Argentina y Latinoamérica

Maylén Bolchinsky Pinsón, Facundo De Feudis Taboada, Francisco Santillán (comp.)

Mar del Plata: Facundo Felipe De Feudis Taboada; Teseopress (2024), 653 pp.

"Este libro reúne un conjunto de investigaciones que desde diferentes perspectivas, problemáticas y objetos de estudio hacen uso de la oralidad para la escritura de la historia. Es fruto del trabajo realizado en el XV Encuentro Nacional y IX Congreso Internacional de Historia Oral. Pasado, present ... more

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Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation
Key Guides

Ernesto Mora Forero, Rosario Arias Callejas

Global Initiative for Justice Truth & Reconciliation (GIJTR) (2021), 151 pp.

"This document was developed as an instrument to support civil society organizations (CSOs) in Colombia in the development of oral archives and in the organization of their archival collections. It draws from the experience of GIJTR partners International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC) and ... more

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La fuerza de esta voz

Daniel Rivera Marín, Elizabeth Builes Carmona

Bogotá: Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (2021), 103 pp.

"Este libro es un homenaje a la historia de millones de colombianos y colombianas que se niegan a convivir con la violencia y que han encontrado en el perdón, y en el encuentro honesto con los responsables del daño y el dolor, el camino hacia la reconstrucción de las relaciones rotas por la guerr ... more

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Transcribing Oral History

Teresa Bergen

New York: Routledge (2020), xix, 207 pp.

"Transcribing Oral History offers a comprehensive guide to the transcription of qualitative interviews, an often richly debated practice within oral history. Beginning with an introduction to the field and an overview of the many disciplines that conduct and transcribe interviews, the book goes on t ... more

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Collective Memory and Oral Text

Marta Wojcicka

Berlin: Peter Lang (2020), 374 pp.

"The aim of this monograph is an attempt to examine the relationship between collective memory and oral texts. The material basis for this presentation consists of folklore oral texts, both prosaic and poetic, different as regards their genres (fairy tales, fables, recollections, traditions, legends ... more

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Experiences in Oral History: Contemporary Witness Interviews in Archive Organizations and Historical Research

Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung (2018), 64 pp.

"The overall aim of the workshop was to promote discussion among the archives on their respective practices, to reflect on the practice of interviewing with the involved historians and, last but not least, to find ways to make better use of the interviews available in the archives [...] The first pa ... more

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The Oral History Manual

Barbara W. Sommer, Mary Kay Quinlan

Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 3rd ed. (2018), viii, 145 pp.

"The Oral History Manual is designed to help anyone interested in doing oral history research to think like an oral historian. Recognizing that oral history is a research methodology, the authors define oral history and then discuss the methodology in the context of the oral history life cycle – t ... more

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Memorias: 12 historias periodísticas

Bogotá: Consejo de Redacción; Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) (2017), 249 pp.

"La publicación “Memorias: 12 historias que nos deja la guerra” es una apuesta y un acercamiento a los diversos acontecimientos que se entretejen en las regiones colombianas, a las memorias que víctimas, excombatientes, comunidades indígenas, afrodescendientes, líderes sociales y el país en ... more

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Oral History Theory

Lynn Abrams

London; New York: Routledge, 2nd ed. (2016), xi, 238 pp.

"Oral history is increasingly acknowledged as a key tool for anyone studying the history of the recent past. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview of oral history theory in an accessible format. The book is structured around key themes, including the peculiarities ... more

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Ethical Guidelines: Using Eyewitness Videos in Human Rights Reporting & Advocacy

Witness (2015), 24 pp.

"The guide’s primary audience is investigators, journalists, advocates, archivists, and others who utilize eyewitness video for reporting, investigating, or documenting human rights issues. While the guide is primarily concerned with videos already produced, many of the ethical considerations disc ... more

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Doing Oral History
Key Guides

Donald A. Ritchie

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed. (2015), xvi, 347 pp.

"Doing Oral History is considered the premier guidebook to oral history, used by professional oral historians, public historians, archivists, and genealogists as a core text in college courses and throughout the public history community. The recent development of digital audio and video recording te ... more

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Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement

Douglas A. Boyd, Mary A. Larson (eds.)

New York et al.: Palgrave Macmillan (2014), xv, 205 pp.

"Exploring the developments that have occurred in the practice of oral history since digital audio and video became viable, this book explores various groundbreaking projects in the history of digital oral history, distilling the insights of pioneers in the field and applying them to the constantly ... more

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Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities

Mark Turin, Claire Wheeler, Eleanor Wilkinson (eds.)

Open Book Publishers (2013), xxiii, 163 pp.

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Periodismo y memoria histórica: La contribución del periodismo en la recuperación de la memoria histórica a partir de testimonios orales

Margarita Antón Crespo, María Estrella Alonso del Barrio, Ana Fuertes Zapatero (coord.)

Salamanca: Comunicación Social Ediciones y Publicaciones (2013), 185 pp.

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Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice

Anna Sheftel, Stacey Zembrzycki (eds.)

New York; Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan (2013), xxv, 301 pp.

"Because oral history interviews are personal interactions between human beings, they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. These reflections from oral historians provide honest and rigorous analyses of actual oral history practice that address the complexities of a human-centered methodology." ... more

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Oral History

Patricia Leavy

New York: Oxford University Press (2011), viii, 186 pp.

"This title is part of the 'Understanding Qualitative Research' series, which is designed to provide researchers with authoritative guides to understanding, presenting, and critiquing analyses and associated inferences. There are three subareas in this series: Quantitative Research, Measurement, and ... more

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Tácticas y estrategias para contar: Historias de la gente sobre conflicto y reconciliación en Colombia

Natalia Franco, Patricia Nieto, Omar Rincón (eds.)

Bogotá: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), Centro de Competencia en Comunicación para América Latina (2010), 212 pp.

"Esta es una historia de historias. Esta es la historia de una intuición que se concretó en idea, que se volvió en proyecto, que se convirtió en comunidad/red llamada www.desdeadentro.info, un tejido de historias que no tiene dueños pero tiene sentido en cuanto cuenta, narra, relata. ¿Qué som ... os? Un movimiento de la narración en el cual las instituciones, los expertos, la academia y la gente se van encontrando por momentos para afirmar que si contamos existimos, resistimos. Somos una red de gente, un tejido de historias, un encuentro de instituciones, una ilusión de convivencia por la dignidad. Un en-trama-do que se hace con y desde las historias de la gente; historias que la guerra no ha podido matar, relatos que se cuentan para existir en el mapa de los visibles y sobrevivientes. Todo comenzó con una intuición afectiva: si no sabemos por qué nos estamos matando, nunca sabremos por qué debemos con/vivir en paz. Y para saber con/ vivir, contamos. La tesis en la que creemos en www.desdeadentro.info es que sin narración no es posible la reconciliación, ni la paz, ni la vida, ni la nación colombiana. La narración se asume como una estrategia de constitución de subjetividad y colectividad, de producción de conocimiento y memoria, de juegos de seducción y conexión. No se trata de contar la guerra (eso lo hacen los medios de comunicación que acompañan el presente de las guerras), tampoco de comprender a los victimarios (ellos solo saben matar y escribir leyes y libros para justificarse), ni de saber la miseria y sufrimiento de las víctimas (hay muchas organizaciones sociales que hacen muy bien este trabajo). Aquí se trata de que los sobrevivientes de esta guerra cuenten sus historias, pero aquellas que quieren, aquellas que les proveen de dignidad e ilusión para seguir resistiendo/viviendo. Así, sin más pretensión, queríamos escuchar las historias de la gente para producir otras memorias, unas cargadas de experiencias de vida y deseos propios. Unas memorias que nos permitan comprender por qué a pesar de la guerra y de perderlo todo la gente de Colombia quiere y desea seguir viviendo, pero sobre todo para saber cómo se vive con dignidad en esta tierra de la indignidad. El resultado: unas memorias frágiles, en flujo, de devenir, para poder imaginar un futuro con sentido. Estas intuiciones se concretan en este libro y en el sitio web desdeadentro.info, historias desde y con la gente. “Si Camilo Torres me enseñó a soñar y Estanislao Zuleta a leer, la gente corriente, la que se levanta y se acuesta, la que mata a otro y reza por él, esa gente que somos todos nosotros, me enseñó a escuchar y a escribir, porque una vez que uno escucha no puede dejar de escribir” (Alfredo Molano). La violencia en Colombia es, también, un duelo de relatos. Por ahora, van ganando los testimonios del Estado, de los victimarios, de los medios de comunicación y de la academia. El país de la dignidad del no-guerrero, del sujeto civil y los colectivos que han sobrevivido en medio de la guerra, van perdiendo el duelo de relatos; esas historias de la gente no han llegado a ser parte del gran relato nacional de nuestra violencia. Pero mientras haya pulsión narrativa existe la posibilidad de ser y tener identidad, porque “una de las afirmaciones más incontrovertibles es aquella que dice que somos los relatos que producimos de nosotros mismos como sujetos y como culturas”. (Páginas 5-6) more

Handbook of Global Oral History Deep Insights

Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation Key Guides

Doing Oral History Key Guides

Handbook of Global Oral History
Deep Insights

Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation
Key Guides

Doing Oral History
Key Guides