Ambivalent Pasts: Nostalgia and Life Stories Research
The Oral History and Life Stories Network has become the major regular
international forum for European oral history and life story researchers.
The European Social Science History Conference has been held biannually since 1996.
The Oral History and Life Stories network has met at each conference since 1998, and
interest in it has been steadily rising. In 2004, some seventy participants gathered at the
network sessions. In 2006 in Amsterdam, in 2008 in Lisbon, and in 2010 in Ghent the network
hosted seventeen sessions, making Oral History and Life Stories one of the largest and most
popular networks of the European Social Science Conference.
We invite proposals for the Glasgow EESHC-conference on 11-14 April 2012
both for individual papers and for entire sessions. Sessions can have various formats:
panels, round table discussions, presentations in other media followed by discussion.
The term nostalgia, derived from the Greek words nostos (return home) and algos (pain, grief)
refers to a wistful yearning for something past, a former place or time. We wish to encourage
reflection on the role of nostalgia in oral history and Life Stories research and analysis.
We would like to explore the relationship between memory, history and nostalgia and look at the
approaches addressing the issues of nostalgia within the oral history framework and wider
historiographical discourses.
We invite contributions discussing conceptual and methodological issues related to memory,
oral history, and nostalgia, based on oral sources and/or personal accounts.
We would welcome proposals addressing the following issues:
