Cultivating supports while venturing into interviewing during COVID-19

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified structural inequities worldwide, the field of oral history and its practitioners are reexamining established best practices. The pandemic has heightened awareness of underlying issues in oral history with the challenges of social distancing, financial collapse, privacy concerns in an increasingly virtual world, and the uneven impacts of the pandemic. This article calls for shoring up and expanding support structures when conducting interviews during and about the pandemic, including supporting oral historians and narrators, designing project supports and creating supportive interview formats, and supporting humanity in and through our work. There are no easy answers to the issues that oral history has been and continues to grapple with, but the pandemic offers an opportunity to reflect on how we engage in this work and create more inclusive and equitable practices moving forward.