Active interview course runs at Isfahan University

The first oral history training course kicked off in Isfahan University with some 40 participants during April. 

The program was arranged by the history group of the university from April 22 to May 20, 2012 with 40 participants from a range of study fields and levels. The workshop was arranged at Dr Mehralizadeh Hall of the literature faculty.

Having been prepared for months, 8 workshop sessions in 16 hours lasting 4 weeks were put on as a brief introduction to oral history and active interview mechanisms and was aimed at training expert forces for research projects of Isfahan University and other oral history centers in the country. Most of the participants were history students in post graduate levels besides students of seminary, librarianship, fiqh and Islamic law.

The workshop was managed by Dr Morteza Nouraei; Dr Morteza Dehqan Nejad was its scientific supervisor and Dr Ali Akbar Kajbaf monitored the workshop's quality level as Drs Nouraei and Mehdi Abolhasani Taraghi along with Ms Moloud Sotoudeh, PhD candidate of local history at Isfahan University, conducted the workshops. 

In line with the workshop's nature, a number of prime oral history experts of the country with a successful backdrop in having interviewed high-profile political and cultural figures in Iran's contemporary history attended the sessions and shared their scientific and practical experiences with the course attendants. To that effect, Mohsen Kazemi, researcher and organizer of the oral history section of the Islamic Revolution Literature Bureau, Hojataleslam Saeid Fakhrzadeh, caretaker of the oral history unit of the Bureau, and Morteza Rasoulipour, caretaker of the oral history division of the Institute for Iran's contemporary History Studies attended the sessions and presented the participants with instances of their interviews, added to the scientific level of the workshops and facilitated the interaction between the participants and oral history centers in the country.

A theory-based test was arranged at the end of the course in which the participants were required to answer questions about the class contents. Moreover, every participant was obliged to exhibit a demo of an oral history interview for 20 minutes.

The research proposals offered by the participants covered a broad range of topics including the culture of sacrifice and martyrdom, finding the trend of martyrdom, finding the root of MS in South Western Isfahan, Kamashche Historical Castle and Village, background of training women in Isfahan Seminary, lectures on research method, untold captivity stories, oral history of Sichan and Husseinabad, etc.

The following were the workshop's topics of discussions:

History and formation of oral history

Interview: a data collection method

Active interviews

Active oral history interviews

Characteristics of oral history interviewers and interviewees

Introduction and assessment of successful oral history interviews in the form of books and multimedia files.

The practice of oral history interviews by the participants.

The test results were used to select interested, competence forces for macro oral history projects in the country. The same workshop will be arranged in the current year owing to the vast reception of the course by students of different study fields.

Translated by: Abbas Hajihashemi