For the past 20 years, the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC) has been a leading international centre in oral history research and training.

In addition to conducting cutting edge oral history research on an impressive range of topics, the SOHC provides training for professional historians, the heritage sector and community groups on oral history methodology, and has been commissioned to conduct oral histories for the banking and whisky industries.

Our research team

Academic staff include:

• Professor Arthur McIvor
• Dr Emma Newlands
• Dr Matthew Smith
• Professor Phil Cooke
• Dr Fearghus Roulston

Among the topics covered by Strathclyde oral historians are:

• working lives
• health history
• disability
• Scottish industrialisation & deindustrialisation
• life in the military
• oral history methodology
• youth culture
• the Troubles

Such research interests have been generously supported by funding from the Wellcome Trust, the AHRC and the Hudson Trust, including:

• Disability and Industrialisation: A Comparative Cultural History of British Coalfields, 1780-1948 (2012-2014) – Wellcome Trust
• Masculinities Challenged: Gender Identities in the Wartime Reserved Occupations in Britain, 1939-45 (2013-2014) – AHRC
• Our Secret War (2013-2014) - Hudson Trust

Recent publications

Amongst the recent publications our researchers have written, or contributed to, are:

• Working Lives: Work in Britain since 1945
• Manchester University Press - Belfast punk and the Troubles: An oral history
• Considering Silence in Oral History Off the Record: Towards an Ethnography of Practice
• Oral History in Scotland, Scottish Historical Review

Our work with business & organisations

The SOHC has been very active over the years with respect to engaging with government, industry and the general public. Among the highlights include:

• influencing occupational health policy & widening public awareness of miner’s lung and asbestosis disease and disability
• roadshow: Living with Disability in Coalfield Communities: Then and Now
• policy brief on exhuming and identifying victims of the Rwandan genocide, Centre for International Governance Innovation
• asylum casework related to the Rwandan genocide