The OHA Public Programming Committee Presents, Lunch & Learn: The Promise and Pitfalls of AI Transcription for Oral Historians

Tuesday, July 21: 11:30-1:30PM CDT

Register Here: https://oha.memberclicks.net/lunchlearn2026

Event flyer with gold cutlery and a plate reads: Lunch & Learn: The Promise and Pitfalls of AI Transcription for Oral Historians, Tuesday, July 21, 11:30AM - 1PM CST, hosted by OHA Public Programming Committee.

This “Lunch & Learn”-style online conversation will help oral historians determine whether Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based transcription services would make sense for projects they are working on. How has AI changed the transcription process? What issues should practitioners keep in mind? We’ll discuss ethical considerations (including privacy issues, informed consent, and intellectual property rights), the kinds of audio files that AI has difficulty with (examples: dialects and older recordings), and how traditional (human-centered) workflow processes might be changed by new AI-based softwares.

Meet your Speakers:

A woman with curly hair and glasses, wearing a beige blazer, pink top, and hoop earrings, smiles in front of a dark blue background. She has a round pin on her lapel.

Alissa Rae Funderburk is the Mellon Foundation Oral Historian for the Margaret Walker Center at JSU. She maintains an oral history archive dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of Black history and culture. She previously developed an oral history course at the Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center and conducted freelance interviews for Jersey City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in oral history from Columbia University. At Columbia, Alissa Rae served as Deputy Director of the Columbia Life Histories Project, and her thesis on the religious experiences of Black men in NYC was a continuation of her undergraduate studies of race, culture, and religion as a John W. Kluge Scholar.

Alissa Rae is 1st Vice President for the Oral History Association and creator of the nonprofit, The Black Oral Historians Network, a virtual meeting ground for Black memory workers. She serves as an interviewer for the NAACP LDF Oral History Project and consults on the HBCU LA Student Protest Archives Oral History Project. Her most recent project is Thee Black Pride in JXN, and her latest research centers on narrator compensation, reparations, and the transcription of Black voices. For more, visit alissaraefunderburk.com.

A woman wearing glasses and a white blouse with a black collar smiles at the camera. She has her hair pulled back and is standing indoors with a blurred background.

Alexis Johnson is the Community Oral Historian and Project Coordinator for the Lowcountry Oral History Initiative (LOHI) at the College of Charleston Libraries and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of History. Under LOHI, she leads the Community Oral History Training Program, a capacity-building initiative that teaches local and regional communities and organizations how to design, conduct, and share oral history projects. She holds a BA in English from Francis Marion University, an MA in Pan-African Studies (African American Studies concentration) from the University of Louisville, and a PhD in Social Foundations of Education (History of Education concentration) from the University of Virginia.