CALL FOR PAPERS
Conflict Oral History: Ukraine, Palestine…& Elsewhere
While the focus on current events in the oral history field remains controversial, (contemporary) crisis oral history continues to grow. However, violent contemporary crises—from invasions and wars to the plight of refugees—often reflect decades if not centuries’-old conflicts and are therefore also historical. How can oral historians ethically engage in current conflict zones or with refugees? Is it too soon to do so? What are the costs of not documenting now? What is the long history of each country or region and how does that history inform peoples’ identity?
The Oral History Review invites article submissions on these and other issues from and about Ukraine, Palestine, and other war-torn countries and regions for consideration in the journal from Spring 2027.
Some potential themes to consider:
- War, migration & refugee realities
- Safekeeping collections (in a potentially shifting physical archive or under threat of censorship)
- Places/time where/when research is physically impossible (or forbidden)
- Ethical considerations, challenges, risks, and precarity
- Displaced researchers in wartime
- Being interviewed as a displaced oral historian and the framework of “refugee”
- For researchers still at home, where every day is a struggle for survival
- Funding: in Ukraine, there is “finally” funding, but deliverables are expected
- Funding: in Palestine–is there any, who are the funders and what are the stipulations?
- History, contested history and contested memory & landscapes of memory/identity
- The state of the oral history field in Ukraine or Palestine before and since the most recent invasions
- For Palestine: The Gaza Strip
Please note that the Oral History Review published its first piece on Ukrainians living with–or in this case, fleeing–the Russian invasion of their country since 2022 in spring 2026.
SeeEleanor Paynter, “Crisis Oral History and the Asylum Timescape: Temporalities, Solidarities, and Affect in Interviews with Ukrainians with Temporary Protection in Italy” (Spring 2026, 53(1), 141–166). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2026.2633140
To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.
Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:
Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com
Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com