This seminar introduces historians of all kinds to the possibilities and pitfalls of ‘making memories’ or doing oral history interviews with people about their experiences of the past. It asks why oral histories matter as an historical source, and explores the various ways in which they can be used. Hear Oral History NSW Vice President Dr Scott McKinnon, discuss the value of oral history and share examples from his own work.

This event is a partnership between Royal Australian Historical Society and Oral History NSW

About the speaker:

Scott McKinnon is a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong and the Vice President of Oral History NSW and Sydney’s Pride History Group. An experienced oral historian, he is the author of Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, Memory and the History of a Gay Male Community (Intellect, 2016) and the co-editor (with Margaret Cook) of the forthcoming Disasters in Australia and New Zealand: Historical Approaches to Understanding Catastrophe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). In 2019 Scott’s oral history work was shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s History Prize in the Digital History category.