CfP: Oral History meets European Studies. Sources, tools and methods in the digital age.

Call for Papers

The Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), together with the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (Frankfurt, Germany), is organising a Summer School to be held in the Maison Robert Schuman in Luxembourg City from 3 to 6 July 2023. The Summer School invites students to explore methods of oral history and to test digital tools and will focus on the way digital sources may shape narratives in contemporary European history.

The Summer School is aimed at PhD candidates as well as early career scholars (postdoctoral researchers) specialising in European History / European studies, who use oral history methods in their research. The programme will tackle the main stages in the production, use, and archiving of oral history interviews through a set of transversal workshops, presentations, and roundtable discussions with experts. The Summer School will be enriched by hands-on activities, in which participants will apply the discussed tools and methods. Students will have the opportunity to present their research projects and to receive feedback from their peers and experts. In addition, the participants will be offered a guided visit to the European Parliament.

The main topics to be discussed are:

• Co-production: How to conduct interviews, methodologies (questionnaires, etc.), technical aspects (sound and video recording), ethics, memory, and remembrance.
• Curation: Data management and indexation, transcription (from oral to written record), software, uses of audio-visual material, digitization, and digitalization.
• Analysis: How to integrate digital oral sources in an academic discourse, legal aspects (authorship and copyright) and data treatment.
• Archiving: Individual collections and historical archives.
• Sharing: Communication, exhibitions, websites, museums, media, and public history projects.

The working language will be English. Applicants should send a 300-word abstract describing their research topic and how they use oral history interviews along with questions they would like to discuss/deepen and a short bio. Applications should be sent to valerie.schafer@uni.lu.

Deadline for the submission of applications is 31 January 2023.

Pleae find the event‘s homepage here.