On May 1st 2019 the London School of Economics (LSE) Law Events Seminar Series hosted a special evening entitled Oral History Research: Illuminating the Past, which showcased the unique value of oral history as a research method. We were delighted Lesley Dingle, Foreign and International Law Librarian, Squire Law Library, University of Cambridge was able to join us and speak about the Eminent Scholars Archive, which she discusses in the article below.
Mary Stewart, Curator of Oral History at the British Library and Deputy Director of National Life Stories opened the evening's proceedings. She shared information about oral history as a research methodology and gave a brief introduction to the origins of oral history in the UK. Focusing on the work of National Life Stories (NLS) – the oral history fieldwork charity based at the British Library – Mary outlined some of NLS's key projects from the last three decades – including extensive work on the arts, industry, publishing, Holocaust testimony and corporate oral history: www.bl.uk/nls. Central to the work of NLS is the long life story interview – where over several interview sessions a narrator is guided to review and speak about their whole life history. This in-depth format encourages deep reflection and detailed description, and also means that once archived there are myriad uses of the interview that often reach far beyond the scope of the initial purposes for which it was recorded. Details of the online catalogue for all the collections and how to access the material onsite at the British Library and online can be found at www.bl.uk/oralhistory. Mary also highlighted NLS's longstanding partnership with the Oral History Society, with whom it provides training in oral history techniques for some 800 people a year: www.ohs.org.uk.
Dr Dvora Liberman, Research Fellow at the London School of Economics Department of Law presented the key findings from her oral history doctoral research project on the little-known yet pivotal role and function of court clerks in Crown Courts, as well as radical reform to the administration of justice in England and Wales with the centralisation of the courts system in 1972. The research study was carried out in collaboration with National Life Stories, British Library and the LSE's Legal Biography Project, and generated a new collection of in-depth life history interviews with Crown Court clerks which are publicly accessible at the British Library Sound Archive. An educational resource on the role of Crown Court clerks will soon be available on the National Justice Museum website www.nationaljusticemuseum.org.uk, and the findings from Dvora's research are outlined in the article ‘Custodians of Continuity in an Era of Change: an Oral History of the Everyday Lives of Crown Court Clerks between 1972 and 2015’, Legal Information Management vol 18(3) September 2018.
The event was expertly chaired by Professor Michael Lobban, co-ordinator of the Legal Biography Project and Professor of Legal History, Department of Law, LSE. The Legal Biography Project aims to promote scholarship in the fields of legal history, legal biography and the history of the legal profession: http://www.lse.ac.uk/law/legal-biography-project. The three presentations were followed by a lively discussion with a mixed audience of people from academic and non-academic backgrounds.
