Hugh Hagan - Secretary

For the past thirty years I have worked for the National Records of Scotland. For the last twelve of those years I have been responsible for implementing the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011 on behalf of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. My job is to help public authorities better manage the records they create on behalf of Scotland’s citizens to safeguard all our information rights. I was an undergraduate and postgraduate at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies, where I researched the lives of women in the shipbuilding communities of Port Glasgow and Greenock in the 1930s. Interviewing twenty-six women and men from that community over a number of years, I explored their lived experience focusing on aspects of culture, religious beliefs and ethnicity, work, domestic management and gender.

I have been a member of the Scottish Oral History Group and trustee since the early 1990s. I am also a trustee of the Scottish Working People’s History Trust, which is dedicated to researching and publishing works about the lives of working people in Scotland, relying heavily on oral history.

I had an illustrious career as a shipwright in Scott Lithgow’s Kingston yard on the Clyde before finding my way into the world of academia when the shipyards were closed in the mid 1980s.

Howard Mitchell - Chair

Currently a producer of oral history based films and creative imaging, I was an undergratuate and post graduate in The School of Scottish Studies in the 1980s and 90s. Course content author for the Open University and Project Management for the Workers' Education Association preceded a range of independent oral history productions including the closure of Lennox Castle Hospital, the history of the Scottish Outdoor Education Centres, Sporting Memories Network resources and recently, Aberdeen's Granite Heritage. Having a keen interest in the changing technologies of recording, interpreting and presenting oral histories, I'm developing 360° and Virtual Reality platforms at present.

Angela Bartie

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh. I did my first oral history interviews in 2003, and since then have interviewed a wide range of people during my own research and as a researcher on other projects, as well as training individuals, community groups and organisations during my time at the Scottish Oral History Centre. I joined the Scottish Oral History Group in 2014, acted as the SOHG representative on the UK Oral History Society, and look forward to continuing my involvement in this fascinating means of connecting with people, sharing stories and recording history.

Erin Farley

I am the Library & Information Officer for Local History at Dundee Libraries, where we hold a large and varied collection including print, manuscripts, photographs and oral histories from the city’s history. I have worked on academic and community oral history research projects in the past, and have been lucky enough to interview lighthouse keepers, craft workers and storytellers among many others. I am also a traditional storyteller, and am interested in the overlap between oral history, tradition, narrative and sense of place.

Lori Watson

I am a musician and lecturer in the dept. of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. I’ve been carrying out fieldwork and oral history interviews since 2001, mostly with traditional musicians in Scotland. My research is currently focussed on the contemporary practices of traditional musicians and I’m developing the first national music collection and a new archive of composition materials, recordings and field interviews on that topic. My favourite oral history interview to date was a telephone interview in 2002 from Glasgow to Lerwick with Peerie Willie Johnson, recorded on MiniDisc. One of my courses at Edinburgh is Archives and Interpretation in which we explore the ways creative and archival work can intersect bringing new insights and meaningful interpretations of archives in a broad sense for individuals and communities.