Turning Talk into Text: Writing Oral History

In this audio-visual digital age, it’s easy to forget that oral historians often use interviews in written formats. This interactive online workshop will focus on approaches and issues in creating text-based outputs from oral history interviews, using examples from Al’s oral history publications and from participants’ own work.

• First, we’ll discuss the range of ways in which oral history interviews are used in text-based outputs: in books, journal articles, websites, exhibitions and other media. We will note how new technologies are enabling new types of production that combine text and audio (and audio-visuals), and the opportunities and challenges posed by 21st-century innovations.

• Second, we’ll explore issues and approaches in creating verbatim and ‘poetic’ transcripts, we’ll review some basic guidelines and some useful software, and we’ll workshop one example for participant transcription and discussion.

• Third, we’ll focus on approaches and issues in editing transcripts for publication, we’ll discuss editorial aims, processes and decisions, and we’ll workshop an example.

• Fourth, we’ll consider different approaches to using oral history interviews in writing and explore ethical, aesthetic and interpretative issues in writing with oral history.

By the end of the day you will have enhanced your understanding and skills in writing with oral history.

Registrations close Thursday 14 August, 5pm.

Facilitator

Alistair Thomson has been teaching oral history in both community and academic settings since 1985, and in 2018 won the Australian University Award for Teaching Excellence in Humanities and Social Sciences. Al has worked as an oral historian at Sussex University and Monash University and has served as President of the International Oral History Association and of Oral History Australia. Al’s oral history books, often collaborative productions, include: Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (1994), Ten Pound Poms: Australia’s Invisible Migrants (2005), Moving Stories: an intimate history of four women across two countries (2011), Oral History and Photography (2011), The Oral History Reader (1998, 2006 and 2016), Australian Lives: An Intimate History (2017) and Fathering: An Australian History (2025). He is currently co-editing The Bloomsbury Oral History Handbook (2026), which includes Al’s chapter ‘Writing oral history’. Website: https://althomsonoralhistory.com.au/.