Publishing oral history since 1969

ORAL HISTORY Journal

Oral History is the oldest and only independent journal publishing the work of oral historians in the UK and beyond. Since it was founded in 1969, it has remained consistently at the forefront of oral history debates.

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The latest issue

OHJ Reviews now online!

The reviews section of the Journal has now moved online, as an open access supplement to the printed journal. 

Download highlights from 50 years of the Journal for free!

Journal search

Searching for a particular article?  Or are you looking for articles on a specific topic? You can search the journal archive by decade or by keyword. 

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Download articles

If you are a member of the OHS, you can search and download complete articles from the Journal Archive via JSTOR.

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Join the Society and get two printed copies a year plus online access to the Journal Archive.

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A journal that pushes boundaries

Founded by Paul Thompson and colleagues in 1969, Oral History has published articles by leading oral historians to push boundaries and open up new areas of debate. It has looked at issues such as memory and public history, inter-generational understanding and cultural transmission, trauma, gender, race and ethnicity, inter/subjectivity, conflict and reconciliation. By joining the Oral History Society, you will receive two copies of the journal a year and have complete online access to past issues. 

Each issue manages to run something to make me rethink an assumption, reconsider a practice or confront a new issue. Congratulations on fifty years of publication and many more!’ 
Don Ritchie
Don Ritchie Historian Emeritus of the United States Senate
The journal has been a force for good and has influenced scholars across disciplines over the decades.
Harry Goulbourne
Harry GoulbourneProfessor Emeritus South Bank University, London
The journal gives us a really valuable sense of connection to a wider comunity of oral historians. Sending in our update is a nice opportunity to reflect on what we've been busy doing and reading everyone else's news helps us know what else is going on.
Rosa Schling and Laura Mitchinson
Rosa Schling and Laura Mitchinson Joint managing directors of On the Record, London
‘For fifty years – a half century! – Oral History has both presented work in oral history from around the world and deepened our thinking about that work. I have especially appreciated the theme issues, which, like oral history itself, give multiple perspectives on the topic at hand.'
Linda Shopes
Linda ShopesPast President, US Oral History Association, Consultant in oral and public history 
Oral history and Oral History must have been doing something right ... to last these first 50 years, overcoming academic skepticism, poverty of means, and our own shortcomings. In fact, “what am I doing right” is a question I often ask, implicitly or explicitly, when I am surprised that people will spend hours talking to us about their lives.
Sandro Portelli
Sandro PortelliProfessor of Anglo-American literature University of Rome La Sapienza
Although Finnish archives have been collecting oral tradition and oral history for over a century, in Finland oral history research was introduced only in the 1980s and became an acceptable approach in academia in the 1990s. This would not have happened without the Oral History Journal, which has been a great source of inspiration for several generations of Finnish oral historians.
Anne Heimo
Anne HeimoUniversity of Turku, Finnish Oral History Network
Oral history brings together people from different fields (academic, professional, community), different disciplines (history, anthropology, media, gerontology etc) and different countries. Creating a journal that draws upon and speaks to such a diverse audience is never easy, but the British Oral History Journal does it better than anyone.
Al Thomson
Al ThomsonProfessor of History Monash University, Australia
I have a complete run of the Oral History Journal from the beginning of the 1990s to the present day. I'm usually bound up in my own style of interviewing, so it has always been invaluable to read about how others use oral history. I particularly love the “Current British Work” section as it continues to reflect people's passion to explore our living memory. Also a big heads up for such a well designed publication!
Alan Dein
Alan DeinRadio Broadcaster
Oral History is like a flowing river of voices - sustaining what so many of us do across the globe. This journal has presented many diverse views and brought together powerful currents that have changed the way in which we think about our practice as oral historians.
Indira Chowdhury
Indira ChowdhuryFounder-Director of the Centre for Public History, Bengaluru, India
Strike a Light - Arts & Heritage is pleased to have developed a relationship with this inspiring journal over the years. We love being part of a national network through your activities and feeling involved in a community of oral historians
Nicola Benge
Nicola BengeStrike a Light Arts & Heritage
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Interested in contributing?

The editorial group welcomes submissions from a wide range of disciplines where the significance of oral history, orality, personal testimony and remembering is understood, valued and debated. This includes academics from the humanities and social sciences, archivists, social workers, journalists working in print and new media, health and community workers, educationalists, librarians, photographers, visual artists and museum curators. The journal’s editorial policy is to sustain a lively and critical understanding of the importance of oral history for the past, present and the future.

If you have an article that you would like to contribute, please read our guidance for authors .

Tell us about your project

Each issue of the journal includes news about oral history projects currently taking place within the UK and internationally. We would very much like to hear about your project.

News about current British oral history projects is featured in the journal. To submit content to the Current British Work section, please send your story in Word format (up to 1,000 words an item) with full contact details to Liz Ison at  journals@ohs.org.uk. Include illustrations if possible (preferably in high resolution jpegs.) 

News about international work is edited by Siobhan Warrington who welcomes all contributions by email to siobhan@oraltestimony.org

Guidance for submitting articles

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Please send news of oral history projects in the UK to  journals@ohs.org.uk

News of international projects should be sent to Siobhan Warrington.

Advertising

Publisher specifications for advertising in Oral History can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here.

For enquiries about advertising contact Liz Ison: journals@ohs.org.uk

Archive

Back issues of the journal, going back to 1972, are available to order or are freely available and downloadable via JSTOR to individual and institutional members.

Reprint Permissions

We are happy to consider requests to reprint articles from Oral History in another publication.

Reviews

Publishers and would be reviewers of books as well as films, radio and television programmes, theatre and exhibitions should contact the reviews editors, Isabel Machado and Fearghus Roulston at ohjreviews@gmail.com

Abstracting and Open Access

Oral History is abstracted here and in: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and at ZETOC (Electronic Table of Contents from the British Library) at http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/

Like other history journals, Oral History is monitoring the emerging situation around Open Access and Plan S compliance. As the October 2019 Royal Historical Society document on this matter makes clear (see https://royalhistsoc.org/policy/publication-open-access/) UKRI’s policy for implementation of Open Access remains sketchy. Oral History and its editors are constantly monitoring this situation. The current policy of the journal complies with current requirements at UK HE institutions around REF and open access. The journal supplies authors with PDF copies of their accepted manuscripts before publication and these can be uploaded to the author’s institutional repository.

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