Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research

Links

We link below to various sites and institutions associated with the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, sorted by country; please click on a heading to reveal links for a particular country.

International
  • International Auto/Biography Association
    In 1999, Zhao Baisheng created the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) at the First International Auto/Biography Conference at Peking University, attended by delegates from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America. IABA aims to broaden the world vision of auto/biographers, scholars and readers, to deepen the cross-cultural understanding of self, identity and experience, and to carry on global dialogues on life writing. An organizing committee was formed in Beijing. After the conference, Craig Howes, director of the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, set up a listserv for IABA.  So far the International Auto/Biography Association has held seven international conferences in Asia, North America, Australia and Europe.
  • The Global Lives Project
  • The International Oral History Association provides a forum for oral historians around the world and a means for cooperation among those concerned with the documentation and interpretation of human experience. IOHA stimulates research that uses the techniques of oral history and promotes the development of standards and principles for the collection and preservation of oral histories. IOHA seeks to foster a better understanding of the democratic nature and value of oral history worldwide.
  • The European Network on Theoryand Practice of Biography. The goal of the ENTPB is to create an international and interdisciplinary forum to allow reflection about theoretical and methodological problems regarding biographic writing and research.
  • PANOS
    An international communications organisation that represents people in developing countries. Panos London publishes oral testimonies from around the world. See in particular:  Mountain voices
    "This website presents interviews with over 300 people who live in mountain and highland regions round the world. Their testimonies offer a personal perspective on change and development." A project initiated by the Panos Oral Testimony Programme. Can be searched by country and/or by theme.
Africa
Australia
  • The HRC Biography Institute
    The Australian National University
    The HRC Biography Institute has been established in order to encourage and promote biographical work of various kinds -- including autobiography, memoir, life-writing -- and in various media.
  • The Life Writing Research Unit
    Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia
    This site contains information about the Unit, its seminars, and the Life Writing journal.
  • The Life Writing Site
     Designed to act as a free public archive of life writing articles and book reviews and to showcase work in life writing.
    Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography
  • LaTrobe University, Bundoora
    Contains information about recent and future activities of the Unit; its history, structure, and funding; and postgraduate applications.
  • The Australian National University
    The National Centre of Biography at The Australian National University was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally.
Austria
  • Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography
    The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography was founded in April 2005 and comprises an international team of 10 researchers. The main critical focus is on the methods of modern biographical writing. Drawing on insights from social science, literary theory, anthropology and gender theory, the institute is developing a comprehensive theory of the genre biography. In addition, work is in progress on five scholarly biographies of exponents of Austrian Modernism: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Eugenie Schwarzwald, Leopold von Andrian, Thomas Bernhard and Ernst Jandl. The work of the Institute contributes to the dynamic and interdisiplinary field of biographical research while reflecting critically on different approaches to biography and on the assumptions underlying biographical writing.
  • Oral History and Life Stories Network
    The Oral History and Life Stories Network has become the major regular international forum for European oral history and life story researchers. The European Social Science History Conference has been held biannually since 1996 and the Oral History and Life Stories network has met at each conference since 1998. Oral History and Life Stories is currently one of the largest, friendliest and most popular networks of the European Social Science Conference. Please see the ESSHC website for further information on the conference.
Brazil
Canada
China
Estonia
Finland
  • European Life Story Archive
    Site includes many links to archives throughout Europe. Online archive under onstruction as of January 2001.
  • Life-story materials in the folklore archives
    In 1926 Kaarle Krohn proposed at the annual meeting of the Finnish Literature Society that it might be a good idea to ask people to recall real events, above all stages and personal experiences in their own lives, in addition to folk tales, sayings and legends. “Even a life seemingly devoid of outward distinction may be endowed with spiritual values, and these should, if possible, be given expression by the persons described themselves”, he said. By the closing decades of the 19th century a band of amateur collectors, local observers, was already forming as a major aid to the nascent discipline now known as folkloristics. This prompted the oft-quoted notion of “the nation side by side with the scholars”. Decades were, however, to pass before any move was made to take up the idea cast out by Krohn, for scholars continued to be interested primarily in crystallised folklore and genres rather than the lives of the people who narrated them.
  • Académie pour l'autobiographie et l'art populaire
France
  • Autopacte 
  • Written almost entirely in French and covering auto/biographical studies mainly in France, this site includes a general bibliography of studies of auto/biography; recent works; theses in progress in French universities; studies of the personal journal from 1938 to the present; a list of personal journals published since 1997; list of journals devoted auto/biography in French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian; lists of guides to writing autobiography in French and English; lists of bibliographies of autobiographies in German, English, Danish, Spanish, French, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Russian; lists of online diaries in English, German, French, and Swedish; lists of recent and upcoming conferences in mainly in France; and names and addresses of specialized bookstores in Paris. Maintained by Philippe Lejeune.
  • Association interdisciplinaire de recherche sur l'epistolairé (l' AIRE)
    The official site of l'AIRE, containing such sections as Accueil", "Présentation", "La revue", "Activités", and "Liens partenaires".
  • Projet Ipséité
    A bibliographic database which keeps intimate diaries and notebooks published or translated into French.

  • Association pour l'Autobiographie

Italy
  • Fondazione Archivio Diaristico Nazionale Onlus
    In Italian, the site describes the Foundation's many activities, including its archive and journal, Primapersona.
  • www.archiviodiari.it/default.htm
    Pieve Santo Stefano is a town in Tuscany which borders on Umbria and Romagna. For seventeen years, in each of the four entries of the town, there has been a big yellow sign-board, together with the official toponomy, where is written “The Town of the Diary”. Infact, in the townhall of Pieve Santo Stefano, there are public archives where autobiographic writings are gathered up. These texts are written by common people. There are diaries, letters, memoirs of one's own existence which show everybody's life and also Italian history. Pieve Santo Stefano, a little village in the Tuscan and Emilian Apennines, was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. The townhall, with its “L” shape, like an open book on a reading desk, and with its armorial bearings, was one of the few buildings which was not destroyed. Forty years after the war, a “house of memory” rose in one of the wings of the townhall. It is a public centre which keeps personal memoirs about one's own life. Also some foreign scholars have been interested in this enterprise. The Archives not only keep, like a museum, popular writings; they also improve their richness in different ways. First, we defined the Archives “the bank of memory”. Now, we call them “nursery”, because the Archives make the past writings revive, as sprouts which spring up in every season. So, new interests in autobiographic writings continuosly rise. First of all, we thought about a prize to increase the number of the texts. We published in some newspapers brief advertisements; a weekly magazine interviewed the director of the Archives. In few weeks, more than hundred texts and collections of letters were sent to the Archives.
  • The Libera University of Autobiography of Anghiari (Arezzo-Italy)
    The Libera University of Autobiography of Anghiari (Arezzo-Italy) is a non-profit cultural association founded in 1998 by Professor Duccio Demetrio (Professor of Philosophy of Education and Narrative and Autobiographic techniques at the University of Milan-Bicocca) and the journalist Saverio Tutino (founder of the National Diaristic Archive in Pieve S. Stefano- Arezzo).
Netherlands
Spain
Turkey
  • History Foundation of Turkey
    There are several groups doing oral history projects in Istanbul and Ankara; History Foundation is one of the leading institutions doing oral history in Turkey.
United Kingdom
  • Brighton's fantastic collective community life history and life writing publisher
    QueenSpark Books began in 1972; as part of a campaign to stop a casino being built in the Queens Park area of Brighton, a book was published detailing one person's long life in the area. The company then became part of a wider political and social movement at the time, chiefly concerned with publishing working class writing and life histories. In subsequent years this mission expanded to include creative writing, and in latter years the mission to enable 'lesser-heard voices' to be heard has resulted in books about and with Brighton & Hove's Sudanese and Bangladeshi communities, homeless people and refugees. The website has archived the text from all of the 89 titles published, and made it fully searchable. Associations with the University of Sussex, particularly the CCE and Life History departments, has always been strong. Many staff, including ex-Director Dr Alistair Thomson and current co-Director Margaretta Jolly, have been involved in QueenSpark's Management Committee, and Dr Thomson worked on a lot of the earlier QueenSpark titles. Director of Mass Observation, Dorothy Sheridan, also sits on the Committee. In addition, many tutors and students have either accessed the University courses via an initial association with QueenSpark, or have become involved with QueenSpark as a result of their studies.
  • British Library - National Sound Archive
    Details of the National Sound Archive's oral history holdings and projects.
  • British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group
    The study group publishes the Auto/Biography Yearbook in addition to running regular conferences.
  • The Centre for Narrative & Auto/Biographical Studies
    The Centre for Narrative & Auto/Biographical Studies (NABS) is an interdisciplinary virtual research centre at the University of Edinburgh. NABS brings together people interested in all aspects of narrative and all forms of auto/biographical representation, from talk to transcribed text, from photographs to memorial sites, from verbal introductions to hagiography, from letters and cards to friends to memoirs and autobiographies, from obituaries to painted portraits, from academic biography to sculpture, and more.
  • Centre for Gender Studies
  • Digital Storytelling
  • The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan
  • University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History
    "...an innovative, refereed on-line journal that seeks to provide a medium for publication in the postgraduate community and to disseminate creative, critical, and inter-disciplinary historical research."
  • Oral History Society 
  • The Oral History Society promotes the collection, preservation and use of recorded memories of the past. If you are interested in working with oral history you should join the only organisation in Britain and Northern Ireland that supports and debates such activities.
  • Oral History Review
  • Oxford Journals
  • Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW)
    The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing exists to encourage those who write biography and memoir, and those who undertake research on life-narratives. It is directed by renowned biographer Professor Hermione Lee and co-directed by postcolonial scholar Professor Elleke Boehmer, and is based at Wolfson College, Oxford. Through events and a dynamic virtual presence, we aim to bring together scholars, students and practitioners, nationally and internationally, within and outside academia, who share an interest in life-writing.
  • Historical Manuscript Commission
    A gateway site to manuscript archives in Britain, with extensive links to non-U.K. archives and related websites worldwide. If you are looking for the location of life histories or auto/biographical manuscripts in English or other languages, this is a good place to begin searching.
  • The Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories. University of Brighton.
  • The Mass-Observation Archive
    Explains the Archive, a collection of writing by ordinary people about their experiences gathered from 1937 to 1949 and resumed in 1981. Includes detailed descriptions of the holdings, finding aids, and information on the Archives' origins. Based at the University of Sussex.
  • National Sound Archive - Oral History Home Page
    Describes the work of the British Library's National Sound Archives, which "collects audio and videotaped interviews as well as carrying out its own programme of life story recordings." Includes a multitude of links to Oral History groups worldwide.
  • Oral History Society
    Provides information about oral history, its uses, the Society, its conferences, the Oral History Journal, its other publications, and email contact. The Society is based in the Sociology Department at Essex University. 
  • Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies
  • The 24 Hour Museum
    Gives links to many useful organisations and museums in the field.
  • Women's Royal Voluntary Services Heritage Plus Project
    An important Heritage Lottery funded community oral history/reminiscence project. The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research has worked closely with this project.
  • The History Press. This fascinating collection of extracts contains diarists famous and ordinary, young and old, serious and cynical, but with Brighton always setting the scene.
  • The Diary Review. The History Press has just published Brighton in Diaries, a collection of diary extracts about the city, one of Britain’s most vibrant seaside resorts.

  • Testimony Films was formed in 1992 by producer, director and writer Steve Humphries. He was formerly a lecturer in history and sociology at the University of Essex and a producer at LWT: he was described by Broadcast magazine as “the king of oral history”

United States
  • a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
    Provides publication and submission information, a history of the journal, list of editorial board members, subscription information, contents of back and forthcoming issues, and announcements of calls for papers, conferences, etc.
  • African-American Autobiography, Critical Issues in
    Detailed syllabus of course dealing with autobiographies by Douglass, Jacobs, Wright, Njeri, McBride, and Senna. Includes list of secondary sources and details of assignments.
  • Association of Personal Historians
    Describes the work of the Association, which aims to help others preserve their life stories and personal histories. Includes membership information, a "Coaching Corner," and extensive links to other life story websites.
  • Autobiographical Criticism: A Bibliography
    An extensive listing of critical articles, books, and websites.
  • Autobiographical Texts dealing with Mental Illness
    Two lists of autobiographies written by current and former mental patients, an article explaining the compilers' classification system, and a form for submitting additional texts.
  • Bibliography of Autobiographical Criticism
    Including works on German writers and filmmakers
  • Biographical Research Center, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
    A guide to the Center's activities, including the publication of the journal biography. Useful links to other sites related to auto/biography.
  • Center for Aging and Community
    The University of Indianapolis Center for Aging and Community is one of Indiana 's leading gerontology centers, serving as a nationally recognized model for its interdisciplinary approach to developing partnerships between higher education and the community.
  • Center for Digital Story Telling
    The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization rooted in the art of personal storytelling. They assist people of all ages in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities.
  • Center for the Study of Lives, University of Southern Maine, Portland
    A site devoted to life stories from the perspective of narrative psychology.
  • 'Dohistory.org' - Step-by-Stepguide to oral history
    Part of the website.
  • H-Oral History
    A member of the Humanities and Social Sciences On-Line service.
  • Hot List for American Autobiography
    Useful list of websites related to Franklin , Thoreau, Henry Adams, Black Elk, Hemingway, and Angelou.
  • Institute for Oral History
    Useful oral history workshop on the web with tips on carrying out research etc.
  • Lifewriting Annual
    The site of Lifewriting Annual which publishes articles and reviews on the full range of lifewriting: biography, autobiography, memoir, journals, diaries,and letters.
  • North American Working Class Autobiographies
    A list of titles, authors, and publication information about works by United States and Canadian authors.
  • Oral History Online
    Provided by Berkeley University.
  • Random Access Memory
    "An experiment in collective remembering." A place to write your own memories online. Over 2500 people have contributed their memories thus far.
  • Resources for the Practice and Study of Autobiographical Writing
    Includes a bibliography of autobiographical criticism, a syllabus for a course on European autobiography with many links, and a list of full-text autobiographies available on the web.
  • The Society of Genealogists