Women in Oral History 2
Time: 2025-09-19 10:45 - 12:15
Location: Small Hall at Auditorium Maximum
Chairman: Lavinia Snejana
Events within this Session
Lessons from the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG)Sector: The 'How' of Care in Oral History
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 10:45 - 12:15
Abstract
Oral history can record the voices of the marginalised and unheard. Survivors of sexual and domestic abuse and those who support them are often rendered invisible in our culture. Not least because they illuminate the persistently high levels of inter-personal violence and abuse committed daily throughout the world. Projects recording oral histories with under-represented communities and those who have experienced trauma, set out to do so in a sensitive and caring way. Oral history projects care about people, their stories and their safety. However, the ‘how’ of care is often less well-understood and practiced than other aspects of recording life-stories. Based on the experience of working closely with a psychotherapist working as a clinical supervisor specialising in sexual violence, a young feminist collective, and not-for-profit organisations, on both a local and national oral history of the Rape Crisis movement in England and Wales, this paper will discuss the ‘how’ of care in oral history. Oral history and talking therapies have areas of commonality that this paper will highlight, including the relationship of listener and listened-to and the importance of supervision and reflective spaces. Both psychotherapists and oral historians, interviewer and interviewee are changed through the listening encounter – it is not ostensibly the aim of the work but an unavoidable by-product, nonetheless. These changes are impossible to predict and can be both destabilising and empowering
Speakers
Energetically United and Enveloped by Water: Building Sustainable Composites: Mulheres Using Barnacles and Components from Aviation Graveyards for Energy Storage
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 10:45 - 12:15
Abstract
The groundbreaking project unites materials science, sustainability, and the rich cultural heritage of the caiçara community: the development of composites for energy storage using sea barnacles and components from the “aviation cemetery.” Beyond technological innovation, it celebrates the genius of women and the wisdom of traditional and native peoples of the Global South, with a focus on fisherwomen and their ancestral technologies. Barnacles, often dismissed as marine waste, possess exceptional mechanical properties, making them ideal for transforming into efficient composites. When combined with aviation discards such as metal alloys and advanced fibers, these materials offer a sustainable solution for energy storage, aligned with the global energy transition and the blue economy. By providing intelligent uses for marine and industrial waste, the project bridges technological progress with environmental stewardship. Its relevance to the IOHA panel extends beyond technology. The work connects the traditional knowledge of caiçara fisherwomen with oral history, offering insights into sustainability and biospheric equity. These women, custodians of generational knowledge, face intersecting challenges of colonial legacies, such as land and water insecurity, menstrual and energy poverty, and systemic violence. Their narratives hold parallels with global conflicts, including Ukraine and Russia or Israel and Palestine, highlighting shared struggles of insecurity and injustice. Through her experience in oral history, the researcher has conducted interviews with marginalized women, exploring the integration of ancestral knowledge with modern technologies. These conversations have enriched her approach, translating local wisdom into practical solutions, such as using barnacles sustainably. The project advances oral history by introducing a new interdisciplinary methodology combining active listening, technological innovation, and cultural appreciation. By documenting and applying caiçara knowledge to advanced composites, it preserves heritage while inspiring future collaborations between science, history, and sustainability. This initiative embodies how technology can honor the past and build an equitable future. Rooted in the circular economy and female ingenuity, it offers a transformative model for integrating cultural heritage into scientific innovation, benefiting society and advancing the field of oral history.
Speakers
Oral History as a Tool for Understanding Women’s lives in Ishinomaki after the Great East Japan Earthquake
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 10:45 - 12:15
Abstract
Research has pointed out that women are often seen as especially vulnerable in disaster contexts. However, based on her own experiences as a survivor and local resident of Ishinomaki and interviews with more than 100 women starting from 2014 to present, the author, Naomi Chiba found that women developed various ways to cope with the tragedy and move forward. Taking an oral history approach for understanding women’s lives in Ishinomaki after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, this research found that women have continued their lives by drawing strength from various hopes and dreams that they were able to hold on to from before the disaster or developed anew after the disaster. The interviews demonstrate that holding onto something that could be described as goals helped them to not lose strength to survive and to move forward even with sorrow. Testimonies by women who experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake could contribute to the empowerment of women in the future. They are encouraging and inspiring. This research aims to enlarge and enhance women’s empowerment through the recording and discussing of oral history. The area hit the hardest was the coastal area of the northern part of Japan on March 11, 2011. It was followed by a giant tsunami that left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing. The City of Ishinomaki is located on the Pacific Ocean and its main industries are related to fishery and agriculture. In February 2011, 162,000 residents lived in Ishinomaki. On March 11, 2011, The Great East Japan Earthquake took 4,000 lives in the city and approximately 50,000 residents were evacuated to shelters and temporary housing.
Speakers
The Unexplored Psyche of Bengali Migrant Women: Voices from Post-1947 Historiography
Type: session | Language: English
Time: 10:45 - 12:15
Abstract
Taking the 1947 Partition that created the two nation-states of India and Pakistan as the backdrop, this paper attempts to explore the multi-layered facets of memory of the Hindu migrant women from East Bengal (present day Bangladesh) who had to abandon their motherland following the Partition and seek refuge across the border in the Indian state of West Bengal. Culling information from oral narratives, collected in the form of structured and semi-structured interviews over a period of two decades, the paper would highlight how, through the memories of a lost homeland, these first-generation migrant women try to cling to their roots and heritage. By foregrounding the dual aspects of memory—trauma of uprootment from their natal set-up and nostalgia of lost homeland—the paper would bring forth the marginalized voices of women. Because of being refugees and their gender, women have remained in the periphery of migrant voices in Partition study. Through Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India and Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin’s Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, migrant women’s voices came to be recognised for the first time. However, these works essentially focussed on women who experienced the travails of Partition in northern India. The eastern part of India, which too, was dissected, where women, too suffered as a result of Partition, remained outside the purview of scholarly works. Women’s voices came more as an adjunct of the male voices, rather being accorded any independent place. This paper is an attempt to hear these unheard voices—through a narration and analysis of their experiential world. Does a change in place and space following forced migration erase the past for them and that they successfully struck new roots and assimilated and blended both psychologically and materially in the present set-up? Or are they still cocooned in the memory and nostalgia of the life left behind? Do they still oscillate between trauma of a lost homeland and trying to find anchor and meaning to their present lives? The study assumes significance in light of the fact that the interviewees for this paper, left their erstwhile places of residence in the decade of the 1950s as pre-teens and have lived the better part of their lives in Calcutta. Thus, whether Calcutta has obfuscated their childhood memories of uprootment and made them citizens of India not only on paper but also in mind, or whether even as citizens of India on paper, they retain their sense of rootlessness and remain migrants in psyche, would be put under lens. Do the terms place and space connote what they have left behind or do these define their post-migration life where they aimed to start afresh? The paper would thus delve deep into the ramifications of the terms ‘place’ and ‘space’ in the context of these refugee women and explore how these so-far-neglected memories shape the collective memory of Partition.