Writing For Historical Publications

Preserving Oral History in Disaster Recovery In the aftermath of the Texas floods, the story below stands out: four women in their 80s, shaped by memories of past deadly floods, advocated for preparedness and emergency protocols that ultimately saved lives. And, by embedding oral history in their emergency planning, their lived experience became a catalyst for community resilience. Across all generations, lived experience is one of the most powerful tools in disaster planning; however, how often are we capturing or using it? As communicators and emergency managers, we must ask: How do we gather, safeguard, and activate these powerful stories? Here are a few considerations: ⭐ Structured Interviews – After events, invite survivors to share what they saw, felt, and did. These reflections shape more human-centred communications and can form the basis for future preparedness information campaigns. ⭐ Memory Maps – Use tools like ArcGIS StoryMaps to pin voices, photos, or videos to places impacted by disaster. Hearing and seeing the true stories of others may prompt residents to assess their preparedness. ⭐ Community Workshops – Create spaces—virtual or in person—where people of all ages can share and reflect together. Find the synergies and pathways for future planning. ⭐ Partnerships – Work with local archives, libraries, or universities to preserve stories responsibly and ethically. (Remember all those floppy and 3.5-inch discs we used to have that can’t be used today?) ⭐ Social Media – Digital platforms can create real-time story threads, but they require curation and caution to avoid loss, misinformation, or fragmentation. ➡️ Make It Actionable 💡 Integrate stories into exercises, presentations, or protocols. 💡 Pair youth and elders to co-present, creating intergenerational mentorship and memory continuity. 💡 Use these experiences to build an oral history of past disasters to shape how you make changes for future ones. By honouring lived experience and embedding it in our plans, we build a more resilient future—one story at a time. What strategies have you used to preserve or share community wisdom after a disaster in your community? This story is inspiring - I would love to have a coffee chat with these ladies one day! #EmergencyPreparedness #OralHistory #CrisisCommunications #Resilience #DisasterRecovery #LivedExperience #CommunityWisdom #PublicInformation

Oral History x Agriculture Oral history in Black culture has so much significance to our existence and agricultural history, especially from elders in our community. When it comes to gardening, there's only so much experience that I've gained in this lifetime so I am always enthusiastically willing to accept the teachings and listen to stories from elders who are filled with indigenous and cultural knowledge about plants, climate, and the land. That type of knowledge exchange is invaluable and powerful. But WHY is oral history so important in agriculture? Slavery and colonialism exploited the agricultural knowledge and shattered the lives of our ancestors/elders. Let us not forget--for centuries, the majority of Black Americans were denied the ability to read and write, so they resorted to passing information through spoken word as an alternative to preserve their history and memories of their indigenous teachings and culture, of which have created the benefits we have today. Whole civilizations are built on the backs of successful agriculture and even Black Farms, despite the inefficient amount of financial support they receive to continue operations. And, as we continue to experience living in a time period where African American history is being banned across state lines-- purposefully erasing history-- I can't imagine what better way to reclaim POWER than through collecting oral history. Reclaiming our time and value. The heirloom gardens project, in collaboration with Princeton University, Spelman College’s Food Studies program, and the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance -- this collective is reminding us of a very important lesson, and that is to take the time to LISTEN & LEARN. There are so many valuable stories when it comes to gardening: generational seed collection, gardening techniques, family history, etc. And collecting oral history in this capacity allows our elders in our communities to be seen and reminded that they are valued beyond anything on this earth. I read these stories and they remind me of my own elders in my family and in my community. And I just hope we can continue to collect more of these so they are never lost, but protected. Knowledge is POWER. #Oralhistory #gardening #Garden #Indigenousknowledge #Preserveourhistory #History #knowledge #Blackpride #Agriculture #foodpractices #tradition #culture #foodtraditions #Food #Universities #Storycollection #storytelling #HBCUs https://lnkd.in/eqNjkN6V

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of working with Muslim Aid UK on a project to document its 40-year journey through a series of oral history interviews. As an experienced community oral historian, my work had always centred on authentic Muslim voices, representation and contribution, so this project felt like a natural extension of that commitment. I had the pleasure of recording and archiving interviews with former founders, CEOs, staff, and trustees who have shaped Muslim Aid since its earliest days. Alongside our wider archive of over 250 oral histories documenting the lives of Muslims in Britain, these conversations placed the story of a single charity firmly within the broader context of British social history. A timeline was also developed to trace Muslim Aid’s development, challenges, and achievements, creating a clear record of how the organisation had responded to crises, policy changes, and shifting community needs. For me, documenting organisational history, especially that of a charity, has never been a purely internal exercise. It has been a way of asking bigger questions about whose work is remembered, whose labour is visible, and who is recognised as part of the national story. Muslim Aid’s history is not only a story about an institution, it is a story about British Muslims organising, giving, governing and caring for others over four decades, in Britain and beyond. Charities often see record-keeping and archiving as a luxury or an administrative task that could be postponed. In reality, it is central to accountability, learning and legacy. Without written and recorded histories, there is no clear way to see how decisions were made, how communities mobilised, or how ideas about faith, justice and solidarity translated into action over time. For minority-led organisations in particular, failing to document that journey risks repeating a familiar pattern in which vital contributions are forgotten, undervalued, or written out of mainstream narratives. By investing in oral history and archiving, Muslim Aid treated its story as part of British history, not a footnote. My hope is that more charities, especially those rooted in underrepresented communities, will look back with the same seriousness and care, so that future generations inherit a record that reflects the full complexity of who built this sector and why. Special thanks to Lamees Hafeez Shakera Mohammed for understanding the importance and impact of this work and Khalid Javid for making it happen. Featuring: Zeb Kasmani , Hamid Azad MCIArb Dr Hany El-Banna Saif Ahmad Mustafa Faruqi Faria Ali, Sara Pantuliano ,Zakya Hussain Saiba Salam, Muhammad Abdul Bari MBE, DL, FRSA Sir Iqbal Sacranie OBE Khalid Javid @Muhammad Walayat Khokhar, mueen chowdhury , @Farooq Murad #muslim #history #charity #britishhistory #socialhistory #charityhistory #nationalarchive #community #oralhistory https://lnkd.in/ecAv3QGM

I'm very excited to share a resource from my project, Voices of Color in School Psychology (VOCSP)! VOCSP documents the history and experiences of school psychologists of color through oral histories and archival research. I have several essays on Substack that draw on the project's research to date. The VOCSP Critical History Companion deepens readers' engagement with the histories, experiences, and intellectual contributions of school psychologists of color. These are more than just interesting stories. Rather, these essays present a critical history that ✨ provides counterstories that center the experiences of those historically marginalized in school psychology, ✨ challenges deficit-based explanations for the underrepresentation of people of color in the profession, and ✨ illuminates the historical and structural factors that influence the experiences of school psychologists of color. The Companion covers 10 essays from the VOCSP Substack. For each essay, there is a summary, questions to prompt critical reflection, and additional readings to strengthen understanding of the essay's topics. It also includes two activities (Local Oral Histories and the Artifact Analysis Exercise) that support the development of school psychologists' historical thinking and encourage us to preserve the profession's history. Finally, the Topic Index and Name Index make it easier to locate essays on specific themes or historical figures. The VOCSP Critical History Companion is available at this link: https://lnkd.in/euThT65Q Whatever your role in the profession - graduate educator, practitioner, graduate student, or administrator - I hope exposure to VOCSP's critical history content prompts reflection on the sociocultural and political contexts that shape school psychology and reminds you that we must learn from the past to shape our profession's future. Even if you're not a school psychologist, VOCSP is fundamentally about how we document, preserve, and learn from history. If you are an educator, a historian, or someone passionate about racial and educational equity, I think you'd appreciate The VOCSP Critical History Companion as well! #SchoolPsychology #CriticalHistory #Antiracism #SocialJustice #RepresentationMatters

The Echo of Memory: On the Art of Oral History In Building a Legacy, published in the Gagosian Quarterly, Lisa Turvey’s conversation with Ben Gillespie and Jennifer Snyder from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art opens a window onto a discipline that resists both the erasures of time and the seductions of myth. With over 2,500 interviews, the Oral History Program has become a living cartography of American visual art—an atlas drawn not from exhibitions or catalogues, but from the fragile, unedited cadence of human voices. Oral history is neither journalism nor hagiography. It is a patient act of stewardship, an invitation to narrators—artists, curators, collectors—to unfold their lives without the pressure of relevance or the tyranny of a single narrative. Here, biography is not an intrusion on the object’s purity; it is a means of restoring the human breath behind the brushstroke. When Kay WalkingStick recalls how Messages to Papa was born of grief and reconciliation, she is not “explaining” her work—she is revealing the ecosystem of memory, loss, and identity in which it took root. The ethics of this practice are as important as its content. Review periods, verbatim transcripts, and narrator control over final form ensure that these stories are not extracted but entrusted. The process—spanning months or even years—is slow by design. It accepts silence as fertile ground, knowing that in those pauses memory ripens into revelation. For the art world, often driven by acceleration and spectacle, oral histories are a counterpoint. They are less about market validation than about narrative reclamation. They do not only serve scholars and curators; they offer future generations the raw material of cultural self-understanding. They allow for multiplicity—conflicting memories of the same event, divergent interpretations of the same work—reminding us that history is not a monolith but a conversation. In the context of collections like the DSLCollection, the lesson is clear: legacy is not built solely through preservation of the object but through preservation of the voice. A painting can be conserved in climate-controlled perfection; yet without the testimony of its maker, the record remains incomplete. Oral history bridges that gap, not by fixing meaning but by keeping it alive, suspended between teller and listener. We live in an age when digital archives promise immortality yet risk flattening nuance into searchable fragments. The Smithsonian’s work insists on something rarer: the dignity of lived chronology, the trust between speaker and recorder, the slow layering of detail into a truth that is as much about tone as fact. In that sense, an oral history is not just a document—it is an act of cultural resistance, affirming that art, like life, is not fully known until it has been spoken. https://lnkd.in/ebb6vkbv