Audio extracts

I’m interested in making short audio stories that include extracts from longer recordings. Listen here  OHW – oral history stories

Books and chapters

My colleague, Helen Frizzell, and I contributed a chapter to Remembering and Becoming, Oral History in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Anna Green and Megan Hutching (2024). Our chapter, “The Kitchen: Insights from a 1950’s domestic workplace” looked at the working environment of Phyllis Aspinall who catered for 100’s of farm workers from her domestic kitchen at Mt Aspiring Station, deep in the Southern Alps. 

Anna Green used an interview I recorded for her Marsden funded Family Memory project for her chapter in the same book, “A Peasant Farmer: Narrative Identity and a Sense of Belonging.” She discussed the same interview in Family Memories, Family Histories and the Identities of Settler family Descendants in New Zealand, Anna Green, in Family Memory, Practices, Transmissions and Uses in a Global Perspective, Radmila Švaříčková Slabáková (Editor), 2022

Reviews by Paul Diamond on RNZ,  NZ Booklovers and by the Oral History Society (UK) 

Interviews I have recorded have been quoted in several publications including:

New Zealand’s Foreign Service, Ian McGibbon, 2022

No Front Line – Inside Stories of New Zealand’s Vietnam War, Claire Hall, 2014

Celebrating Wellington Girls – 125 Years of Wellington Girls College, Margot Schwass, 2008

I also record Artist Talks

An edited version of a talk by Dame Robin White at McLeavey Gallery, Wellington on 14 August 2021 appears in Something is Happening Here by Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga, Robin White talks about Aio ngaira – This is us, page 256. The audio recording of the talk has been archived in the Oral History Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

Exhibitions

The Dowse Art Museum used material from oral history recordings with Guy Ngan for the book Guy Ngan which accompanied the 2019 exhibitions Guy Ngan: Habitation at the Dowse and Guy Ngan: Either Possible or Necessary at Artspace Aotearoa. The Artspace exhibition also reproduced a timeline compiled as part of the research for the oral history https://artspace-aotearoa.nz/exhibitions/guy-ngan-either-possible-or-necessary

Articles 

I am the co-editor of Oral History in New Zealand, the Journal of the National Oral History Association of New Zealand. The journal is published annually and includes long or short articles, book, documentary or exhibition reviews, reports of meetings and conferences, or work in progress. I have contributed reports and reviews.

Past issues of the journal are online https://www.oralhistory.org.nz/index.php/home/publications/journals/

Natalie Looyer’s work, A Bibliography of Oral History Scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand, contains a list of manuals, books and journal articles using oral history. 

Submissions and Practice Guides 

I have written and contributed to a number of guides and resources for oral historians published on the National Oral History Association website www.oralhistory.org.nz as well as submitting publicly on matters affecting oral historians. Most recently I appeared at the Justice Select Committee to speak to my written submission on the Privacy Amendment Bill 2023 arguing for better alignment of the legislation with research and archiving activities. I also submitted to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment on their review of the Copyright Act 1994 drawing attention to the application of copyright to oral history work.