Oral history in UK doctoral research: extent of use and researcher preparedness for emotionally demanding work

Calabria, Verusca, Harding, Jenny and Meiklejohn, Louise (2023) Oral history in UK doctoral research: extent of use and researcher preparedness for emotionally demanding work. The Oral History Review, 2023. pp. 1-32. ISSN 1533-8592

Text Calabria, Harding and Meiklejohn 2023 Oral History in UK Doctoral Research.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 7 September 2024. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0. Download (525kB) | Request a copy

Abstract / Description

Oral history is increasingly used in academic teaching and research across many disciplines and contexts in the UK. However, there is currently no accurate picture of the extent to which oral history is practiced at the doctoral level and the diversity of its disciplinary and institutional contexts. Similarly, there is no clear understanding of how doctoral students are prepared for doing oral history research and what their particular concerns might be. This article presents the findings from a recent mixed-method pilot study which explored (1) the extent of use of oral history in doctoral research both as a main methodology and a supplementary method of data collection, and (2) the conceptual, ethical, and practical needs of doctoral students engaging with oral history. Focus group interviews generated detailed discussion of the often-unrecognized emotional labor involved in oral history research, the lack of preparedness in dealing with it, its potential impact on the researcher, and ways of mitigating this. This article examines the underinvestigated element of emotional labor in conducting oral history research, entanglements of responses and responsibilities, and ways of practicing an ethics of care in the current higher education context.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Oral History Review on 06/03/2023, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00940798.2023.2175698. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way”
Uncontrolled Keywords:	care relations, doctoral research, emotional labor, feminist care ethics, neoliberalization of the academy, oral history methodology, self-care support structures
Subjects:	300 Social sciences 300 Social sciences > 370 Education 900 History & geography
Department:	School of Computing and Digital Media
Depositing User:	Jennifer Harding
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2023 09:31
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2023 09:53
URI:	https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/id/eprint/8371

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