Experts Answer to Oral History Questions

100 Questions/25

If oral history is an interdisciplinary science, to which discipline is it closest?

Translated by Mandana Karimi

2026-4-16

We asked several researchers and activists in the field of oral history to express their views on oral history questions. The names of each participant are listed at the beginning of their answers, and the text of all answers will be published on this portal by the end of the week. The goal of this project is to open new doors to an issue and promote scientific discussions in the field of oral history.

In this project, a question is asked every Saturday, and we ask experts to present their views in the form of a short text (about 100 words) by the end of the week. All answers will be published together so that the audience can compare and analyze the views.

The content is the opinions of the senders and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Oral History website. Although the answers are supposed to be based on about 100 words, in order to be polite and not to leave the discussion incomplete, in some cases, answers longer than that are also accepted.

The experts are asked to submit their answers by Sunday night so that all answers can be published on Tuesday.

Question/25
If oral history is an interdisciplinary science, to which discipline is it closest?

Answers to Question 25:

Gholamreza Azari Khakestar

Oral history is a method and approach for historical studies and research that is of considerable importance due to its attractiveness and expression of hidden angles. This scientific method has also found an interdisciplinary function among the humanities. It is also popular in sociology, social sciences, literature, political science, architecture, etc.

Studies in the field of oral history indicate that in each of the disciplines, a part of the data can be collected through interviews and oral history discourse. From chronicling to compiling experiences and organizational knowledge, each one is somehow related to oral history. If we consider oral history as a scientific method for compiling contemporary history, we can also benefit from this method in theoretical studies and empirical writing of other sciences.

Hassan Beheshtipour

Oral history has a deep connection with several other disciplines, the most important of which are:

1. History, because it is at the heart of history in terms of purpose, but its method is based on the narratives of individuals, not just documents.

2. Social sciences, including sociology and anthropology, play a direct role in understanding social contexts, power structures, culture, and human life experiences.

3. Psychology, to understand memory and its errors, biases, psychological trauma, and the emotional effects of interviews.

4. Linguistics and narratology are the basis for analyzing discourse, narrative structure, speech style, and vocabulary choice in interviews.

5. Cultural studies in the field of recognizing stereotypes and recognizing symbols, values, identities, and ways of life of groups that are reflected in narratives.

6. Communications and journalism to enhance interview skills, questioning techniques, conversation management, and data recording.

Mohammad Mehdi Abdollahzadeh

Human knowledge was initially general and in the course of growth, development and research, it was divided into scientific disciplines such as mathematics, physics, sociology and history, each of which has its own concepts, principles, foundations and methods, such as mathematics, physics, biology and history.

In the process of knowledge development, in some cases it became necessary to conduct new studies using the methods of studying several scientific disciplines, which were called interdisciplinary studies, such as oral history.

In interdisciplinary studies, the principles, foundations and research methods of the disciplines that have the most in common with these branches are used.

Due to the nature of oral history, every historian must use more of the principles, foundations and methods of scientific disciplines such as history, social sciences, sociology, anthropology and psychology in order to achieve acceptable results.

Abul-Fat’h Mo’men

Oral history, as a subset of history, is an interdisciplinary science that has a meaningful connection with literature due to its specific characteristics; because it deals with dialects, languages, and subcultures in the context of the standard language. This field is also related to sociology and social sciences, because the memories of narrators are observers of social and cultural events and they themselves are part of the same ecosystem. On the other hand, the study of economic developments, industrial and scientific development is also within the scope of oral history. Even in the study of infectious diseases, interviews with those involved are important. Therefore, oral history provides the opportunity to discuss various topics and, in addition to history, has a close connection with literature, sociology, and popular culture.

Abolfazl Hassanabadi

Oral history cannot be defined by sciences such as comparative history and its interdisciplinary structure, but as a research field it has been an effective tool for studying this field. Especially since the 1960s, when the field of interdisciplinary studies on various topics such as blacks, women, marginalized groups and immigrants became prominent, the use of oral history to document and provide a suitable platform for recording and documenting their voices has expanded greatly. Today, oral history is used in various fields from industry to medicine, and of course, the common feature of all of them is empiricism with a historical approach

Shafiqeh Niknafs

Interdisciplinary means dialogue and interaction between two or more scientific disciplines with the motive of promoting and improving them.

In oral history, like its parent discipline, history, various sciences have been used to answer the ambiguities and questions arising from its methodology. Including sciences such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, anthropology, biographical studies, memory cognition, women's studies, etc. Considering that many of the ambiguities in oral history are related to its dependence on memory and its subjectivity, and there are also criticisms about the weakness of memory, its changeability, the influence of memory on the dominant discourse, and issues of this kind, it can perhaps be said that psychology and sciences related to the cognition of memory and brain function have had the greatest impact on improving and promoting oral history methods.

Hamid Qazvini

Although the final output of oral history can be considered by everyone and used in scientific approaches of all disciplines, it is closer to the discipline of history due to methodological affinities and the topics and issues considered.

In any case, oral history attempts to receive, record, and disseminate the narratives of people who either witnessed past events or were actively present in them. This effort is done by answering the questions of today and tomorrow. This work, with whatever motivation it takes, further adds to the resources of historians.

Seyyed Mohammad Sadeq Feyz

Oral history, as its name suggests, is defined under the discipline of history; but since it is not always associated with the narration of general events and also deals with other specialized fields, it must be called the center or adopted sister of other disciplines. The important issue in historical narratives is its integration with the element of time and the culture of society. This tension, with any approach, directs the view of it to the social and human fields, and therefore it must be defined under these topics. The child of history and the adopted sister of other disciplines, especially the humanities!

Gholamreza Azizi

Emphasizing that oral history is a trend in contemporary historiography, it does not seem that oral history can be considered an interdisciplinary science in its exact and complete sense. With the explanation that one of the old tools of historiography (i.e., the use of eyewitness information in narrative history) has been used in the new form of the interview by “oral historians.” Of course, the interview method has been used before historians by specialists in some other humanities disciplines (including sociologists, social psychologists, etc.).

In some projects and from another perspective, qualitative research tools and methods have been used to convert interview information into research data. But in any case, it seems that the main skeleton and structure of oral history is based on history.

Artificial Intelligence

Oral history, as an interdisciplinary science, is closest to the discipline of history, since its main goal is to record and reconstruct the past through human narratives. However, methodologically, it has deep links to sociology and anthropology, since it relies on interviews, observation, and analysis of lived experiences. Also, communication skills and interview techniques make it close to the field of communication sciences. In practice, oral history is located on the border between classical historiography and social sciences, but due to its focus on reconstructing past events and interpreting them in a temporal context, it can ultimately be considered closer to history.