4-day online course offered by Oral History Victoria

Taught by Carla Pascoe Leahy, Sarah Rood and Alistair Thomson

Are you a PhD, Masters or Honours student, or a post-doc, about to start a research project using oral history – and need training to get you on the right track? Perhaps you’ve already started a graduate oral history project and want advice and support? You may be a historian, or you work in another social science or humanities discipline that uses life story interviews. This four-day, online training course could be just what you need.

In May 2025, three of Australia’s leading oral historians, in partnership with Oral History Victoria, are teaching this popular oral history intensive course aimed at university research students. We will teach you how to plan an oral history project and apply for ethics approval. You’ll learn how to create excellent interviews and document the recordings for use in research. We’ll explore approaches to analysing interviews and interpreting memories. And we’ll consider how to write a thesis using oral history and to create other types of oral history productions.

You will be active participants in the teaching and learning: reading a selection of key texts, bringing examples and issues from you own research, workshopping issues with the group, conducting practice interviews, discussing interview extracts from each participant, and developing a peer support group of graduate oral history researchers from around Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Each day school will be taught online via Zoom, from 9.30am-4pm Australian Eastern Standard time. The course will be limited to 18 participants.

Feedback from participants in this course in 2024:

“Many thanks for a terrific 4 days from the three of you from OHV … so valuable in redirecting and redrafting my research project. Initially I had doubts about the full value of a 4 day zoom meet with 14 or 17 post grads, but it exceeded all expectations.”

“It was terrific to have access to such skilled teachers/facilitators and to come together with other graduate students and to receive such a vast array of helpful resources.”

“I was very happy with the course - expert presenters who were very respectful of/responsive to the participants, great management with everything running on time, different formats to maintain interest, relevant/engaging activities especially listening to everyone's interview extracts.”

“Al, Carla and Sarah, you made such a warm and welcoming environment! You were all engaging, and passionate and held space for everyone's opinions and thoughts. Thank you!”

Course outline

Day 1 Friday 2 May - Planning Your Oral History Project & Seeking Ethics Approval

Day 2 Saturday 3 May - Creating & Documenting Oral History Interviews

(fortnight break while participants conduct practice interviews)

Day 3 Friday 16 May - Interpreting Oral Histories

Day 4 Saturday 17 May - Making (Oral) Histories in Writing and other Media

Course fees:

$500 for Oral History Victoria and Oral History Australia members;

$750 non-members

We anticipate participants will draw on funds from their own or departmental graduate research budgets. For students without access to research funds, bursaries might be available from state and territory oral history associations.

Contact: for further information and to discuss the course, please contact: Alistair.Thomson@monash.edu

Trainer profiles

Carla Pascoe Leahy will co-teach days 1 and 3 of the course. Carla is an experienced oral history practitioner who has worked at the University of Melbourne and University of Tasmania and now practises as an independent historical consultant. She is passionate about the power of storytelling and the importance of applying an ethics of care to the oral history relationship. Carla has used oral history to uncover intimate and emotion-rich stories of childhood, adolescence, and parenthood, as well as illuminating human relationships to place and environmental change. Her monographs included Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia ((2011) and Becoming a Mother: An Australian History (2023) and she was Joint Editor of Studies in Oral History, the journal of Oral History Australia, from 2019 to 2023.

Sarah Rood will co-teach days 2 and 4. Sarah is a professional consulting historian with Way Back When who has been working in the field for the past 20 years. She has seen the uses and applications of oral history change drastically, and has made oral history productions in a wide range of media. Motivated by a desire to help communicate the past and to help connect individuals and communities with history and identity Sarah has recorded countless oral history interviews. Firmly believing that everyone has a story to tell, Sarah aims to work with people to record their stories in a way that both documents their experiences and ensures that (with permission) it can be accessed by others in the future. Exploring the relationship between new technologies and oral histories has become a particular area of interest for Sarah in recent years.

Alistair Thomson will administer the course and co-teach all four days. Al has worked as Professor of Oral History at Sussex University and Professor of History at Monash University and has served as President of the International Oral History Association and of Oral History Australia. He has been teaching oral history in both community and academic settings since 1985, has supervised 37 successful oral history MA and PhD dissertations, and in 2018 won the Australian University Award for Teaching Excellence in Humanities and Social Sciences. Al’s oral history books 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 (2016), and Australian Lives: An Intimate History (2017). He is currently co-editing The Bloomsbury Oral History Handbook.