Workshop on Oral History in Today’s World for Aspiring Oral Historians by Sambhaavnaa Institute
About Sambhaavnaa Institute
Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics nestled in a small village called Kandwari, in the lap of the mighty Dhauladhar mountain ranges in Himachal Pradesh, is an alternative learning and living space for those concerned with social and political change.
Founded under the aegis of the Kumud Bhushan Education Society in 2004 Sambhaavnaa’s main mission has been to nurture value-based leadership by encouraging individuals, especially the youth; to discuss and develop a critical perspective on the ideals and ideas that define a just society.
About the Workshop
In the last few decades, oral history has captivated everyone’s attention. 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, and many more.
Sambhaavnaa in collaboration with the Oral History Association of India is organizing this workshop, in which, we focus on all 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, they will be working with 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.
About the Resource Persons
Rahi Soren , Sumallya Mukhopadhyay, Aniket Alam , Sarmistha Dutta Gupta , Sanghamitra Chatterjee, Nandini Oza, Vrunda Pathare
Date and Venue
July 1 to 5, 2023, Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO – Kandbari, Tehsil – Palampur, District – Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh
Contact Information
For any other info: WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and e-mail: [email protected]
