Archives and Special Collections, the Scottish Political Archive and the Division of History, Heritage and Politics have created the University Pandemic Oral History project to record the lived experiences of the University community – staff and students alike – during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project team have been interviewing a wide range of staff since August 2021, capturing the shared and differing experiences that the pandemic has given us all. The project is now progressing onto interviewing students so that we can evidence for the future how all of the University of Stirling community got through this difficult and unprecedented period of history.
We are now calling out for students who would be interested in being interviewed for this oral history project and sharing their experiences of the pandemic. Students can be undergraduate, postgraduate or even recently graduated and from any field of study – everyone’s experiences will tell a valuable part of the University of Stirling story. Students will be interviewed by a select group of current students who have been trained in oral history interviewing skills.
Criteria for eligibility:
- Students must have been commencing their first year of study at the University on or before 1st October 2020
- Students must have been studying at the University for at least one academic year during the period 2019-2022
What would be asked of you:
Interviews will be conducted via Teams so that there will be no access restrictions and they are able to be easily recorded. If you do not have a computer readily accessible to you from which to run Teams, the University Library have laptops for loan. Teams can also work on mobile devices but we would encourage desktop use.
We will have topics we’d like to touch on in the interview but the length of the interview really depends on how much you would like to say. We can organise interviews at a time to suit you and we would usually allocate 1h – 1h30m just to be sure that there’s no rush.
Interviews will be conducted by a small group of students trained in oral history interviewing.
Once the interview has concluded we will send you a link to the recording of your interview so that you can listen over what you have said. You will also be sent an interview release form where you can stipulate how and when you are happy for your interview to be used. All interviews will be deposited with the University Archive but we are happy to apply closure periods if you would prefer not to make your account immediately available. We can discuss this with you and will not make your interview available to anyone before you have completed this form and signed it.
If you are interested in taking part, please email Rosie (Assistant Archivist) on rosie.al-mulla@stir.ac.uk with your name, your course title and dates of study and any dates/periods of time when you know you are unavailable for interview.
If you have further questions before you volunteer to be interviewed, please also direct them to Rosie Al-Mulla.
