Troubling the Archives

How can we animate and activate existing oral history collections that have been deposited in local, provincial, and federal archival repositories, where they often languish for decades, unheard and unlistened to? In turning to three fascinating oral history collections by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies (CAMS), the Montreal Holocaust Museum, and the National Library of Australia, the three panelists bring the analytical sensibility of the oral historian to bear on their close listening to archived life stories.

Together, they wrestle with questions of sharing authority, voice, the emotional resonance of archived oral history collections, and the underlying dynamic of interviews that were expected to conform to the logic of large-scale research projects. Beyond carrying us into rich micro-historical studies, they panelists will jointly reflect on “best practices” of working with existing oral history interviews. 

How can you participate? Join us in person by or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions or if we can make this event more accessible for you: Contact us at info.4@concordia.ca

Eleni Polychronakos

Eleni Polychronakos holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University.  She is also a writer and teacher who holds both a Masters in Literature (McGill, 2000) and one in Journalism (UBC, 2007). Her short fiction has appeared in The Puritan, The New Quarterly, The Bath Short Story Award Anthology 2019 and other literary publications. One of her stories was long-listed for the 2020 CBC Short Story Competition. From 2011 to 2015, she was a member of the collective that edits and publishes Roommagazine, a longstanding Canadian journal of feminist literature. Eleni has worked as an intern producer on CBC Radio One’s The Sunday Edition. As a freelance journalist, she has reported and written articles for The Tyee, rabble.ca, The New Westminster Newsleader, Kyoto Journal, etc. She volunteered for two years as a co-producer on the The F-Word, a weekly feminist program on Co-op Radio Vancouver. 

Marie-Odile Samson

Marie-Odile Samson (she/her) recently obtained a MA in History from Concordia University (2024). Her research is anchored in oral history testimonies from Holocaust survivors and explores their intimate experiences of displacement and exile in the Soviet Central Asian Republics during the Second World War. She holds a BA in public history from Concordia University (2021), where she focused on histories of genocide and violence, and has completed a year in the Master’s in museum studies at UQàM (2022), where she studied the intricacies of museum practice. She is currently working as a research and exhibition assistant at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. 

Mélissa-Anne Ménard

Mélissa-Anne Ménard is an oral historian whose research focuses on the history of childhood and emotions, stories of migration, and the production of archives. Her research explores the ethical and methodological ramifications of reusing archived oral history interviews conducted by other researchers to develop frameworks and protocols to allow us to reuse the countless oral history collection that often lie dormant in archives. She recently worked as the Associate Director at COHDS (2023-2025) and holds a CEGEP degree in Jazz and popular violin.

Barbara Lorenzkowski

Barbara Lorenzkowski is an oral historian of childhood and youth whose work explores the ways in which global processes of migration, displacement, and violence have shaped small people’s lives in outsized ways. She recently published the co-edited anthology Small Stories of War: Children, Youth, and Conflict in Canada and Beyond (with Kristine Alexander and Andrew Burt, McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023) and is currently completing a FQRSC-funded book project on The Children’s War, a large-scale oral history project on children’s sensuous and emotional life-worlds in Atlantic Canada during the Second World War. Dr. Lorenzkowski served as the Lead Co-Director of COHDS between 2023 and 2026.

Visit the COHDS website for the full project abstracts.