Introduction to Oral History – Part 1

with Lauren Laframboise and Kelann Currie-Williams 

English

This workshop will provide you with some of the fundamentals in the interdisciplinary field of oral history. Participants will learn about an oral history approach to interviewing, ethics in research, and the many ways that oral histories are shared with the public. This workshop is strongly recommended to all new affiliates, as it is intended to present the methodology and ethics followed by our Centre. 

Lauren Laframboise is a PhD student in History at Concordia and a Student Representative on the COHDS Administrative Board. Her research explores the impacts of deindustrialization in the apparel industry in Montréal and New York City. In 2021, Lauren completed her MA in History at Concordia, and from 2020-2022 she was the Associate Director of Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time (DéPOT). She has worked on a variety of public history projects exploring labour and immigration history, including museum exhibitions, online oral history platforms, walking tours, and documentary film and radio. She is also a member of the Concordia Research and Education Workers’ Union (CREW–CSN) Organizing Council and Co-convener of their Feminist Workplace Committee. 

Kelann Currie-Williams (she/they) is an oral historian, photo-based artist, and writer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Kelann is currently a PhD student in the Humanities Interdisciplinary Program (HUMA) where their doctoral project focuses on the varied image-making and photographic image preservation practices taken up by Black Canadians during the late 19th to late 20th century, as well as the presence of these photographs within personal, community, and institutional photographic archives. Her critical work has appeared in Urban History Review, the Canadian Journal of History, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and in Philosophy of Photography.