Practicing Oral History Among Refugees and Host Communities

Practicing Oral History among Refugees and Host Communities provides a comprehensive and practical guide to applied oral history with refugees, teaching the reader how to use applied, contemporary oral history to help provide solutions to the ‘mega-problem’ that is the worldwide refugee crisis.The book surveys the history of the practice and explains its successful applications in fields from journalism, law and psychiatry to technology, the prevention of terrorism and the design of public services. It defines applied oral history with refugees as a field, teaching rigorous, accessible methodologies for doing it, as well as outlining the importance of doing the same work with host communities. The book examines important legal and ethical parameters around this complex, sensitive field, and highlights the cost-effective, sustainable benefits that are being drawn from this work at all levels. It outlines the sociopolitical and theoretical frameworks around such oral histories, and the benefits for practitioners’ future careers. Both in scope and approach, it thoroughly equips readers for doing their own oral history projects with refugees or host communities, wherever they are. Using innovative case studies from seven continents and from the author’s own work, this manual is the ideal guide for oral historians and those working with refugees or host communities.

About the Author

Marella Hoffman is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and has held positions at Cambridge University as well as at universities in France, Switzerland and Ireland. A former chief editor of a public policy magazine, her projects with communities have been taught as positive practice by government. Her other books include Practicing Oral History to Improve Public Policies and Programs (2018), Asylum under Dreaming Spires: Refugees’ Lives in Cambridge Today (2017), and Savoir-Faire of the Elders: Green Knowledge in the French Mediterranean Hills (2016). She runs a Writers’ Retreat Centre in southern France; visit www.marellahoffman.com.