Call for Participation: ‘Oral History and Movement‘

The Oral History Network of Ireland (OHNI) is pleased to announce its 2026 meeting, taking place on 18–19 June 2026 at the Meadowlands Hotel in Tralee, County Kerry. The annual meeting is a gathering of practising oral historians and all those with an interest in the recording, collecting and preserving oral history and heritage.

This two-day event offers interactive workshops, presentations and project showcases that are designed to inspire discussion, learning, knowledge and to create greater networking amongst our community. Whether you are experienced in oral history or just beginning your journey, we invite you to join us and share your insights and ideas.

Mary Stewart, Lead Curator of Oral History at the British Library, will deliver the keynote address at this year’s meeting. Mary is Director of the oral history fieldwork charity National Life Stories, and a trustee of OHNI’s UK equivalent, the Oral History Society. Her research interests include family histories and narratives and their use as a tool for academic research and oral history and their reception by family members of interviewees. She has also been exploring the ‘biography’ of the oral history archive: contextualising collections, capturing information about the research process and exploring ethical debates about the re-use archived oral history material.

Contributions are welcome in a range of formats:

Standard Papers (20 minutes)
Posters and Visual Presentations
Community Project Showcases & Moments (10 minutes) – this shorter format allows for presentations that offer an overview of new or developing projects, or that reflect on outstanding or memorable interviews, experiences, and/or incidents that influenced or changed the way the presenter practices oral history.

This year’s theme, ‘Oral History and Movement’, invites reflection on the many ways movement shapes human experience and storytelling. Movement can be understood broadly, and we invite reflections on how movement shapes human experience and storytelling: the physical movement of people across places and borders; social and political movements that bring people together/divide them; movement through time, memory, and the generations; movement of voices from the private spaces/spheres into public archives; those memories which emerge from our journeys taken, changes endured, and moments of transition.

Movement is central to how stories are told and remembered. Oral histories frequently unfold through accounts of travel, migration, work, protest, displacement, and return, but also through quieter movements: daily routines, changing neighbourhoods, or shifts in identity and belonging. This conference aims to create an inclusive and welcoming space for academics, community historians and OHNI members to explore how movement, in all its forms, is recorded, interpreted, and shared through oral history.

Possible Themes and Topics

We welcome proposals that engage with the theme Oral History and Movement in creative, reflective, or practical ways. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Migration, emigration, immigration, and diaspora experiences
Asylum, refuge, displacement, forced movement and borders
Social, political, and labour movements
Everyday mobility: work, commuting, travel, and local journeys
Borders, boundaries, and crossing points
Movement across generations: memory, inheritance, and change over time
Rural and urban change, including housing, land, and community movement
Walking interviews, mobile methods, and place-based storytelling
Music, performance, sport and embodied movement
Movement from private memory to public archive: ethics and access
Digital movement: sharing oral histories online and across platforms

We welcome proposals from community groups, educators, archivists, academics, early career researchers, heritage professionals and anyone engaged in oral history practice or research.

Submissions highlighting collaborative or community-based projects are particularly encouraged.

Submission Guidelines

To participate, please submit an abstract (of not more than 250 words) along with your contact details using the form on our website no later than 20th March 2026

Contact Information

David Ryan, Communications Chair, Oral History Network of Ireland

Contact Email

info@oralhistorynetworkireland.ie

URL https://oralhistorynetworkireland.ie/events/2026-meeting/

The first National Archives of Taiwan opened its doors in November 2025, as part of the celebration of the new National Archives, an international conference will be held in June 2026. We sincerely invite your proposal for the conference. 

As information technology plays an increasingly vital role in the development of the public and private sectors, it has brought about significant changes in archival management automation processes and digital governance. This includes the application of Artificial 

Intelligence (AI), digital archives management, archive retrieval and open access. These digital technologies are transforming how archival value is created and transmitted, bringing benefits to the archival management field. 

In anticipation of the inauguration of the first National Archives, this bureau plans to hold the International Conference on Archives Management – Digital Governance and Smart Services on Wednesday, 10th – Thursday, 11th June 2026 at the National Archives, Linkou, New Taipei City. The conference will include keynote speeches, panel discussions, presentation sessions, and poster presentations. 

The National Archives hereby invites your proposals for presentations and posters related to the theme, and subthemes are described below. 

Subthemes 

1. Emerging Information Technology 

How is the new information technology used in archives management, access, and use of archives? 

• Blockchain 

• Big Data 

• Artificial Intelligence 

• Next Generation Wireless Technology 

• Digital Communication Tools 

• Machine Learning 

• 5G Internet of Things (IoT) 

• Text Mining 

2. Digital Transformation of Archives Management 

Digital transformation and its influence on archive management, including the digital transformation of the archival workspace, management, smart appraisal, and the use of mobile devices. 

• Evolution of Archives Digital Transformation 

• Digital Transformation and Organizational Adjustment 

• Digital Archive Professional Work Space 

• Management of Electronic Archives 

• Public Participation in the Digital Age 

• Creating Archive Value through Digital Transformation 

• Smart Archival Management 

• Smart Review and Appraisal 

• The use of Mobile Devices 

3. Smart Archival Services 

Discussion and experience sharing on applying digital tools to archive-related service, including access, value-adding, personal information protection and curation, promotion, and customer service on archives. 

• Archive Access and Digital Innovation 

• Digital Value-Adding of Archive 

• Personal Data Protection in Archive Application 

• Digital Curation and Promotion of Archive 

• Smart Customer Service on Archive 

4. Digital Resilience and Security 

How to protect and manage the risk of information security in archive management. 

• Digital Policy and Legal System on archive 

• Information Security on Archive Management 

• Digital Risk Management of Archive 

• Digital Ethics of Archive 

5. Digital Archival Competency 

How to empower archivists and archives management field with digital ability. 

• Digital Strategy Planning for Archives 

• Archivists’ digital training 

• Collaboration with Digital Tools 

• Use of Digital Data 

• Mobile working on archival workspace 

• Digital Communication on archival service 

6. Cross-disciplinary Archival Development 

How do digital tools and technology play a part in the cross-disciplinary archive use and promotion? 

• Digital Sharing on Archival resource 

• Digital Innovation and Cooperation on Archive 

• Promotion and Exchange of Digital Skills of Archive 

• Collaborative writing of Audio-Visual Archives 

• Digital Marketing of Archive 

Submission form (bottom of page)

This workshop is part of the project “ACTIVATE: The activist, the archivist and the researcher. Novel collaborative strategies of transnational research, archiving and exhibiting social and political dissent in Europe (19th-21st centuries)”. ACTIVATE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2023 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101182859.

The project was launched in January 2025 and explores in a 4-year initiative practices of collecting, archiving, and promoting documents, objects, and data, contributing to a renewed European history of social and political dissent from the early 19th century to the present day.

Further information about the project is available at https://activate-horizon.eu/

“Political Activism and material culture: definitions, practices, periodisations. A dialogue between researchers, archivists and museum curators”
Call for Paper | ACTIVATE WP3 Workshop #1
May 4-5 2026 | University of Padua and online
This workshop aims at bringing together academic, archival, museum partners with specific expertise on the relationship between politics and material culture. In recent decades, historiography has undergone a ‘material turn’ that has led to a less asymmetrical focus on the relationship between human and non-human, in particular objects and artefacts. This has produced new perspectives on the construction of social identities, the experiences of consumption and the trajectories of everyday life. At the same time, less attention has been paid to the “material history of politics” focusing on objects as key elements of political mobilisation. From the late 18th century revolutions to the recent Gen Z protests in Nepal, Philippines or Madagascar, the process of politicisation has been expressed through ‘disobedient’ objects, capable of evoking, striking and provoking in a politically significant way. Physical objects can play all sorts of roles in collective action, as we have seen in many recent movements, where material participation has been particularly widespread and important. The main objective of this workshop is to look at the history of militant culture by focusing on a scarcely developed aspect: the link between political experience and material culture. It aims to do so by promoting close cooperation between researchers and those involved in collecting, cataloguing and exhibiting such documentary material.

Workshop topics:
1) Definition of political/militant objects
How to define political objects from the perspective of historians, archivist and museums? What makes an object political, and specifically militant? What objects has political activism imagined and used in its long history, stretching from the age of revolutions to the present day? This question is particularly interesting in relation to objects that do not appear political at first glance. Are objects like Annemarie Renger’s dancing shoes or Margaret Thatcher’s handbags political objects? Bras and false eyelashes are certainly not political objects, but they became so in the feminist struggles of the 1970s. The issue is closely linked to the uses and practices that these objects generate from time to time and to the different forms of material participation that they entail, even in everyday life. It allows us to reflect on different chronologies and phases of political activism, focusing on four themes: revolutionary movements; feminisms; environmental struggles; international solidarity. A definition of political objects should go beyond time periods and materiality and also address the political dimension of everyday objects.

2) History and methods of collecting militant objects
Since the late 18th century, revolutions and protests, as well as party and grassroots mobilisations, have shown that social and political activism often leads to the preservation of material objects bearing witness to the engagement of individuals, groups, and associations. Archives, like historiography, have so far focused more on written holdings than 3-D objects and are now facing a new challenge. Museums, especially historical ones, are certainly more accustomed to collecting objects, especially those with recognized historical-artistic value. Yet political and militant objects often lack such value. How were collections formed that related to activism? Where, by whom, and for what purposes were they kept? When were they turned into heritage? What country-specific differences exist with regard to the history of collecting militant objects?

3) Cataloguing and preparing metadata
Objects need to be catalogued for making them accessible to research. Therefore, questions about cataloguing and enriching metadata a central: How can a political object be described – WHAT is an object, HOW is it catalogued, and HOW does it fit into archive/library and museums structures? How do museums and archives identify and record political objects in their collections? What parameters are used to define political objects, and how is this reflected in the metadata? Which (national) standards such as ministerial requirements for metadata standards for object cataloging are used at the respective institutions that are applied during cataloging and what perspectives and problems arise due to the different nature of the description: use of data fields and how do they correspond to standards known from the archival sector, are there interfaces?

4) Preserving, reproducing, and enhancing material sources
How should different materials be handled? Paper is generally patient when stored properly, but how should fragile materials such as textiles, which are not made to last forever, be handled? Different materials place different demands on packaging, climatic conditions, and storage. Archives and museums face the challenge of preserving these materials in the long term. Dealing with objects that are irrevocably subject to decay is also a challenge that particularly affects AV materials and forces many institutions to act. Digitization is not a solution to this problem, but a resource that gives objects a second life and new uses, providing novel means of access, consultation, interpretation, and valorization. To date, militant objects have rarely been central to heritage valorization projects: thus, beyond their and museums present their collections and narrate their history.

We encourage researchers, archivists, and museum curators to submit papers addressing these topics either from a theoretical and methodological perspective or by presenting specific case studies or experiences.

Please submit your proposal, with a maximum of 3,000 characters including spaces, along with a brief CV, by 28 January 2026 to this email: activatewp3@gmail.com

Organizing Committee:
Carlotta Sorba (University of Padua)
Anja Kruke (Friedrich Ebert Foundation)
Laura Valentini (Friedrich Ebert Foundation)
Alessio Petrizzo (University of Padua)

Contact Email

activatewp3@gmail.com

URL: https://activate-horizon.eu/