Launch platform oral history collections in Croatia en Bosnia
For colleagues with special interest in the Balkan region and online oral history collections:
Date: to be announced
Venue: to be announced
Language: English
The Erasmus Studio, the center for e-research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam is proud to announce the launch of two video Oral History platforms: Croatian Memories at www.Croatianmemories.org and Bosnian Memories at www.bosnianmemories.org.
These platforms provide access to personal accounts on war and detention during the Second World War and following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. All interviews can be viewed and searched in both the original languages and in the English translation.
On 26 September 2013 Croatian Memories was launched in Zagreb, presenting more than 400 interviews from different ethnic communities recorded in Croatia by the NGO Documenta in collaboration with ES . On 7 November 2013 the Bosnian sibling project Bosnian Memories, launched a platform with initially 100 interviews that have been collected and processed by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Human Rights Centre of the University of Sarajevo. Future plans of the consortia involved include the design and development of a search environment for scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds who want to do research in the region. Such a federated search environment fits well into the Digital Humanities agenda, which aims to facilitate data-driven research with qualitative data. We invite colleagues to visit the portals and get a glimpse of the dramatic and often traumatic experiences reflected in the tales from former Yugoslavia. For an explanation of the approach of these projects see: www.postyugoslavvoices.org.
In May/June 2014 the Erasmus Studio and the Huizinga institute will organize a special seminar for PhD’s on the use of oral history in the context of research on conflict and trauma in the Balkans.