CALL FOR PAPERS

Conflict Oral History: Ukraine, Palestine…& Elsewhere

While the focus on current events in the oral history field remains controversial, (contemporary) crisis oral history continues to grow. However, violent contemporary crises—from invasions and wars to the plight of refugees—often reflect decades if not centuries’-old conflicts and are therefore also historical. How can oral historians ethically engage in current conflict zones or with refugees? Is it too soon to do so? What are the costs of not documenting now? What is the long history of each country or region and how does that history inform peoples’ identity?

The Oral History Review invites article submissions on these and other issues from and about Ukraine, Palestine, and other war-torn countries and regions for consideration in the journal from Spring 2027.

Some potential themes to consider:

• War, migration & refugee realities
• Safekeeping collections (in a potentially shifting physical archive or under threat of censorship)
• Places/time where/when research is physically impossible (or forbidden)
• Ethical considerations, challenges, risks, and precarity
  • Displaced researchers in wartime 
  • Being interviewed as a displaced oral historian and the framework of “refugee”
  • For researchers still at home, where every day is a struggle for survival
  • Funding: in Ukraine, there is “finally” funding, but deliverables are expected
  • Funding: in Palestine–is there any, who are the funders and what are the stipulations?
  • History, contested history and contested memory & landscapes of memory/identity
  • The state of the oral history field in Ukraine or Palestine before and since the most recent invasions
  • For Palestine: The Gaza Strip

Please note that the Oral History Review published its first piece on Ukrainians living with–or in this case, fleeing–the Russian invasion of their country since 2022 in spring 2026.

SeeEleanor Paynter, “Crisis Oral History and the Asylum Timescape: Temporalities, Solidarities, and Affect in Interviews with Ukrainians with Temporary Protection in Italy” (Spring 2026, 53(1), 141–166). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2026.2633140

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com

CALL FOR PAPERS

Oral History in Practice: Applied Oral History, Survey Articles, From the Archives

 The Editors of the Oral History Review invite prospective authors to submit articles on oral history practice based on our recently expanded Mission Statement for consideration in issues beginning in 2027. In particular, we seek research-based articles focusing on state-of-the field surveys, applied oral history, and archives. We describe each of these features below.

Survey Articles

Survey articles serve as a kind of “state of the field” essay. They explore the evolution and/or current role of oral history.

Some Survey Article topics of special interest to the Editors include:

• A survey article on a specific location (country, region, or state), e.g.—
• Oral history in and from both French and English-speaking Canada. (What is the state of the field and the relationship to oral history in the U.S., and to the English and/or French-speaking world more broadly? How do the regions of Canadian oral history interact? Why was the Canadian Oral History Association dissolved?)

• A survey article on the history and evolution of feminist contributions to oral history methodology–and therefore historiography. (While this is largely the theme of Beyond Women’s Words—itself a reflection on the classic 1991 text by Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, Women’s Words––other early works have been published in the OHR, including in 1979, “Oral History in Teaching Women’s Studies,” and, in 1987, “Beginning Where We Are: Feminist Methodology in Oral History.” Is it time for an update with a view toward the historiography of oral history? 
• The practices of oral history under authoritarianism. How have oral historians in different regions approached their work in dangerous times? What patterns or changes over time can be identified? What is the state of intellectual/academic freedom? How has funding been weaponized?
• A survey article on an adjacent field.
• A survey article on a project or projects that consider the oral history of a community, institution, or governmental agency–or a comparison study across agencies.

New Survey Articles:

• Amy Starecheski, “Oral History and Anthropology: A Survey of Histories and Possibilities” (Spring 2026, 53(1), 111–140). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2026.2618282 

Applied Oral History Articles

These articles extract broad lessons from specific projects that all oral history practitioners can learn from. These will most often focus on projects that result in system-wide/broad changes, are scalable, or can serve as a model in other contexts and locations.

Some Applied Oral History Article topics of special interest to the Editors include:

• Oral history in federal governments and programs. 
• Community-based oral history projects.
• Public or individual health projects where listening/story was important.
• Oral history and the arts. How is oral history used to inform art, where, when & why?
• Oral history and incarceration. 

 New Applied Oral History Articles:

• Lynn Lewis, “Documenting a Movement Ecosystem: Picture the Homeless, a Participatory Oral History Research Case Study” (Spring 2026, 53(1), 167–198). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2026.2626501 

From the Archives

In “From the Archives” features, authors analyze an archival oral history collection in terms of the original goals of a project and collection, as well as the collection’s historical value, accessibility, and its use–or usefulness–in secondary research.

Some From the Archives feature topics of special interest to the Editors include:

• Oral history from programs and archives at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)–everything from archival descriptions and original project goals to gaps in archives of subjects and people, to availability and potential future endeavors, and more.
• Archivists’ perspectives on the value of oral history recordings and collections; the creation, ingesting, and managing of collections; how archival practices and technologies have changed across time and context; the archivist point of view on AI and online oral history collections (& issues of informed consent, privacy, etc.)
• We would also like to see more of the hundreds of oral history archives that exist brought to the light and examined—from original goals to accessibility.

New From the Archive articles: 

• Shanna Farrell, “From the Archives: Promises and Pitfalls of the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Project” (Spring 2025, 52(1), 87–110). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2025.2468517

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com

The Editors of the Oral History Review invite prospective authors to consider themes around oral history, climate change, and the environment for publication beginning in 2027.

Broadly speaking, these themes include but are not limited to oral history and—

• Ecological knowledge
• Agriculture
• Critical animal studies
• Urban ecology
• Environmental change & the climate crises

Some ideas & questions to consider regarding the climate crisis:

• Are oral historians asking questions on climate change in their life story interviews?
• If engagement with (solving) climate change is a political act, what role can and does oral history play? 
• When oral historians interview in community, are they addressing home/sense of place, weather pattern and environmental changes over time?
• What about public health, inequality & environmental justice?
• What role does oral history play in shaping environmental policy? At the federal level, is oral history being used to gather knowledge and improve public policies?
• What does the integration of oral history into scientific research look like?
• In the U.S., the federal government has made egregious funding cuts to NOAA. What will be the long-term consequences of these cuts and to the NOAA Voices Oral History Archives? What other archives should be explored?
• In what ways do (and should) oral historians communicate and disseminate climate? 
• War and migration are also, and will increasingly be, a big part of climate change stories.

For reference, see recent OHR articles on oral history and climate change:

• Ricia Anne Chansky, “Oral History and the Climate Crisis: Listening in the Aftermath of Disaster” (Spring 2024, 51(2), 321–350). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2024.2380507
• Liz Skilton, “Capturing that which is Fleeting: Using History Harvests to Collect Rapid Response Oral Histories of Disaster Experience” (Fall 2024, 51(2), 278–320). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2024.2382902
• S. Weaver, T. Bakhmetyeva & D. W. Rinn, “Climate Witness: Oral Environmental History and Community-Based Research—A Case Study from Trans-Himalayan India” (Spring 2022, 49(1), 56–76). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2022.2038016

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com