Oral History in Today’s World

A workshop for aspiring oral historians

1st to 5th July 2023

In the last few decades, oral history has captivated everyone’s attention. Through the pioneering work done by the likes of Ritu Menon, Urvashi Butalia, and K Lalita in India, oral history has emerged as a method through which individuated voices, hitherto unheard and unacknowledged, came to the forefront. It leads to, what can be called, the reconstruction of history, making the discipline far more accessible and democratic.

The method of research encourages one to interview people and secure evidence about the past. The methodological shift has had enduring impacts, for people from diverse backgrounds utilise oral history to rehearse, rethink, and reinvent the past. We have scholars working on non-hegemonic, marginalized sections of our society, activists recording interviews of people involved in political movements, organizations preserving family histories, professionals archiving stories of people engaged in developing eminent institutions in India, museums curating oral histories of neighborhoods, so on and so forth.

There are two processes, however, intrinsically laced with oral history. First, oral history is the act of recording that evidently underscores its reconstructive agenda; second, it is also what the recording produces.

While aspiring oral historians record interviews, they often grapple with the second aspect. They remain unaware of the intersubjective dimension of interviews, the power dynamics in the interview process, the art of listening to one’s interviewees, the perils of framing the transcript, the interpretive conflict embedded in the narratives, the ethical responsibility of carrying people’s stories, and the politics of archiving the interviews.

Sambhaavnaa in collaboration with the Oral History Association of India is organizing this workshop, in which, we focus on both the processes of oral history. We will start with fundamental features like designing a questionnaire, identifying one’s narrators, and learning to listen in order to stretch our discussion on how oral history is co-created in the spatial configuration shared between the interviewee and the interviewer.

Against this backdrop, we believe that the workshop will be ideal for students, scholars, practitioners, and activists who employ, or aspire to employ, the method of oral history in their respective domains; the residential programme will be immersive and interactive in nature, involving field visits where participants will expectedly record interviews and share their experiences with others.

In this workshop, we will be working with our participants to:

• Understand how an oral history is an empowering tool that highlights the voices from our society’s periphery and brings them to the center of our discussions.
• Explore the manner in which one can frame questions without suffering from a fixity of form.
• Develop a certain sensitivity to listen to the voices of the narrators attentively.
• Think through ways of imbibing body movements, tone, intonation, gesture, stutters, stammers, and silences permeated in the narratives.
• Examine the implications of conducting video and/or audio recordings.
• Comprehend how one’s subjective position needs to be negotiated to avoid interpretive conflicts.
• Acknowledge the politics of documenting and archiving the interviews.
• Be aware of the ethical responsibilities of having people as subjects of one’s research.

Resource Persons

Rahi Soren– Dr. Rahi Soren is currently Assistant Professor at Jadavpur University since 2019. She completed her research as a Ph.D. fellow in biological science concerning forest fire ecology in the remote locations of Bankura, West Bengal. She has also been involved with the Oral History Association of India in the capacity of the Executive Committee Member. She has also published her research in national and international journals and conferences and organised workshops and seminars to promote scientific culture in global forums.

Sumallya Mukhopadhyay – Dr. Sumallya Mukhopadhyay obtained Ph.D. from the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, in 2022. His area of interest includes, among other things, the politics of dispossession in narratives related to the 1947 Partition of Bengal. His latest paper is Understanding Climate Change and Its Impact on Myanmar. He has been awarded the International Oral History Association Scholarship (2023 & 2020), South Asia Speaks Fellowship (2022), TATA Trusts – Partition Archive Research Grant (2021). He is an executive committee member of OHAI and an assistant professor at the Department of English, Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies, Delhi-NCR.

Aniket Alam –Aniket is a historian of the Himalayas who has also been a journalist, editor. His book, Becoming India: Western Himalayas Under British Rule (Cambridge University Press, Delhi, 2008) was based on oral as well as textual sources. He is interested in the overlaps between orality and literacy and the manner in which oral sources of history are being radically changed in our textual world. He has been teaching history at IIIT Hyderabad and is keen to bring digital methods and tools to the study of the past.

Sarmistha Dutta Gupta – Sarmistha Dutta Gupta is a Kolkata-based researcher, bilingual writer, curator, literary translator and feminist activist. Her books include Identities and Histories: Women’s Writing and Politics in Bengal, and her latest book is titled Jallianwala Bagher Journal, based on an installation exhibition that she curated called ‘Ways of Remembering Jallianwala Bagh and Rabindranath Tagore’s Response to the Massacre’ at the Victoria Memorial Hall.  Local and oral histories from Amritsar have played a major role in this work [blog https://theoralhistorian.com/2021/02/21/the-jallianwala-bagh-journals-sarmistha-dutta-gupta/ ].

Sanghamitra Chatterjee –Sanghmitra is the founding member of Past Perfect Heritage Management, an archiving and research agency based out of Mumbai, which specializes in institutional and family archiving. She is currently the Secretary of OHAI.

Nandini Oza – Nandini,  writer, activist, chronicler and oral historian, has been a full-time activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). Over the past decade and a half, she has been working on the oral histories of the Narmada struggle and bringing these out in the public domain in form of books and in digital format. Former president of the Oral History Association of India (March 2020- March 2022), Nandini’s latest work is The Struggle for Narmada: An Oral History of Narmada Bachao Andolan by Adivasi Leaders Keshavbhau and Kevalsingh Vasave.

Vrunda Pathare – Vrunda Pathare, Head, Godrej Archives, was instrumental in setting up the Godrej Archives and establishing archival processes as an integral part of the organizational activity at Godrej. Earlier, she worked as Assistant Archivist at TIFR Archives of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. She is currently the Secretary of the Steering Committee of the Section on Business Archives (SBA) of the International Council on Archives (ICA). She has been a founding member of the Oral History Association of India (OHAI) and is currently its President. 

Saaz Aggarwal
Saaz listens to people and writes their stories. Her main work is with elderly Sindhis, recording
their memories of life in Sindh just before, during, and soon after Partition. These have been
published in the form of books, blogs, YouTube videos, and online encyclopedia entries. Saaz’s
body of work includes biographies, translations, and humor columns. Her latest book is Losing
Home, Finding Home. For more information on her works, see: http://www.saazaggarwal.com/

Who is the workshop for: This workshop is ideal for students, scholars, activists, academics, professionals, writers, and aspiring historians.

Date and Venue: 1 to 5 July 2023, Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO – Kandbari, Tehsil – Palampur, District – Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh

 Contribution towards Programs Costs (INR): 

• Corporates – 10000
• FCRA-funded organizations – 8000
• For Indian-funded organizations– 6000
• For individuals and others – 5000

Our fee structure depends upon where you come from, so please share genuine references to your organization. The cost includes workshop expenses, inclusive of all on-site workshop costs: boarding, lodging, and all the materials used in the workshop. Need-based partial waivers are available; we have a very limited number of partial waivers, so, please apply for a waiver only if you really need it. Please do remember that there may be others who need it more than you.

Language: English and Hindi 

How to reach: Please visit: Getting here

For any other info:  WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and e-mail: programs@sambhaavnaa.org