We are happy to remind that the call for the 23rd International Oral History Association Conference “Re-Thinking Oral History” has already been opened! The event will be held in Kraków, Poland, on 16-19 September 2025. Oral history practitioners: scholars and activists are kindly invited to submit their abstracts via on-line form on the conference website: https://ioha2025.conference.pl

There you can also learn more about all invited guests: masterclasses lecturers including Michael Frisch, Alessandro Portelli and Anna Wylegała, keynote speakers including Mary Marshall Clark and Rib Davis and ten distinguished plenary discussants! (https://ioha2025.conference.pl/en/invited-guests)

The organizers call on oral historians worldwide to consciously rethink the idea and practice of their discipline. It became particularly important in the face of old and new challenges with long-lasting and unpredictable consequences: the crisis of liberal democracy, growing tensions in international politics, climate change with its devastating outcomes on human life, increasing inequalities, wars, and mass migrations.

Participants are encouraged to address one or more of the following questions in their proposals:

- Political involvement or independence: is ethical neutrality achievable and morally correct in a polarized world?
- Methodological standards: how much does the technological development of AI challenge them?
- Healing the wounds: how far can the therapeutic role of oral history go?
- Oral history responses to human crises: what methodological and ethical problems of emergency documenting and archiving may we use?
- “Lending our ears” (Portelli): how can we provide silenced and marginalized voices access to the public discourse?
- Oral history and environmental history: what are the areas of cooperation?
- Empowering community archives: how to teach them to create their own oral histories?
- How do we balance the dominance of Western academia with the voices of the non-Western world? – agency and resources.
- Globality versus locality of oral history: how to translate local practices into internationally recognized scholarship?
- Post-coloniality: how does oral history help societies reckon with colonial pasts and assist in building post-colonial futures?
- Disseminating oral history: what new methods can we use to present interviews to our audiences?
- Multilingualism as a challenge to global oral history: how to record stories in mother tongues?

Proposals for individual papers, session panels (5 papers each), or audiovisual presentations (film/play screenings followed by round table discussions) are to be submitted by July 31, 2024, via the online form. Members of national oral history associations are encouraged to check the appropriate box and provide the name of the relevant organization. Individual paper proposals (up to 300 words) must contain the title of the paper, an abstract, and a short bio-note of its author(s). Panel proposals (up to 600 words) must include the title and a description of the session, the titles of all papers, and short bio-notes for all participants. Panel proposals must be international in membership (representing at least two countries). Please indicate the language of your paper/panel (English or Spanish). Audio-visual presentation proposals, in addition to including a description of the film/play (up to 300 words), must provide the names and bios of all discussants. If the film/play is not in English, please make sure that it is subtitled. Plenary events will be translated into Spanish.

Decisions on the acceptance or rejection of proposals will be announced by the end of September 2024. Registration will be open between October 2024 and January 2025. The conference’s program will be ready by February 2025.

The organizers will not cover travel and accommodation costs; however, IOHA may provide a limited number of travel grants (more information on how to apply can be found on the IOHA website: https://www.ioha.org).

In case of any questions, do not hesitate to contact organizers via email: ioha.krakow@gmail.com

Organizer: Polish Oral History Association
Co-organizers: Centre of Community Archives in Warsaw, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity in Warsaw (ENRS), Faculty of History, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, International Oral History Association (IOHA), The Remembrance and Future Centre in Wrocław