Register Now for OHA’s Trauma-Informed Interviewing, Reckoning & Beyond: A Virtual Symposium

The Oral History Association will host a virtual three-day symposium on trauma-informed interviewing, reckoning, and beyond, June 23, 24 and 25, 2026.

The first day of the symposium will focus on trauma informed interview methodology, including project design, community engagement, and interview techniques. The second day will explore reckoning with ethical issues around oral history projects centered on trauma, including resiliency, healing and accountability. The final day will highlight questions about what happens after the interviews are completed, including strategies for what comes next, impact on communities, narrators, and interviewers, and using public history to engage a wide audience.

Key questions that will be addressed include: How do we work reciprocally with communities? How do we navigate insider/outsider dynamics? How soon is too soon to do a project? How do we avoid reducing people to their traumas and treating their stories as monoliths? How can we respect the cultural specificities of how traumas manifest in different communities? What are our responsibilities to narrators versus their narratives? How do we mobilize these stories for policy change and other forms of justice?

Symposium co-chairs, Shanna Farrell, Anna Sheftel, and Francine D. Spang-Willis, along with symposium committee members, will invite a curated selection of presenters to speak about their oral history work as it relates to these three overarching topics.

Registration Rates (USD)

Member Rates

• OHA Member with Institutional Support — $100
• OHA Independent Practitioner / Emerging Professional Member — $50
• OHA Life Members / Student / Retirees / Underemployed — $25

Non-Member Rates

• Institutional Support — $150
• Independent Practitioners — $100
• Student / Retirees / Underemployed — $50

Institutions

• Non-Partner Member Institution — $350
• Partner Member Institution— $250