Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling

COHDS 2026 Annual General Assembly is coming up !
Don’t miss our AGA, a special moment to connect with the COHDS community and meet our wonderful affiliates! This year, we are thrilled to welcome as our keynote speaker Dr. Ioana Radu .

𖥔 September 18th
𖥔 LB 1019 (Sunroom), COHDS

Schedule:
11:00 am – 12:00 p.m. Keynote by Dr. Ioana Radu
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 – 2:30 p.m. Annual General Assembly (reporting, elections, Q&A)

All are welcome, free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Register to attend in person or online on our website.
We look forward to seeing you there 🌟

COHDS invites oral history practitioners, artists, and creative storytellers to apply for our Scholars-in-Residence program for the 2026–2027 academic year.

This program offers a calm and collaborative workspace where COHDS affiliates can continue their projects, connect with the community, and develop new collaborations.

Scholars-in-Residence will have access to a dedicated workstation in the COHDS lab, a personal locker, and shared centre spaces, including our main meeting room (the “Sunroom”) for occasional writing retreats.

Residents are invited to participate in termly potluck lunches and to engage with COHDS programming as attendees, participants, facilitators, or organizers.

𖥔 Application deadline: Tuesday, September 8, 2026
𖥔 Application materials: Cover letter describing your research and interest in the program + CV
𖥔 Submit applications to: [email protected]
𖥔 Successful applicants will be invited to attend the COHDS Annual General Assembly on Friday, September 18 (11:00 AM–2:30 PM).

Join a vibrant community of oral history practitioners, artists, and researchers exploring collaborative and creative approaches to storytelling 🌟

📣 Call for Proposals: SHCY 2027 Conference

The Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY) invites proposals for its XVI Biennial International Conference, “Troubling Methodologies: In Search of Young People in History,” taking place at Concordia University in Montréal from June 28–30, 2027.

The conference seeks to foster conversations about the sources, methods, and ways of knowing that shape research on the histories of children and youth. Scholars working across time periods, regions, and disciplines are encouraged to submit proposals, with particular interest in projects exploring oral history, collaborative research, and innovative methodological approaches.

Proposals are welcome in English and French.

𖥔 Conference dates: June 28–30, 2027
𖥔 Submission deadline: September 15, 2026
𖥔 Formats: Panels, roundtables, individual papers, workshops, walking tours, exhibitions, and film screenings
𖥔 Submit proposals to: [email protected]

To read the full call, please refer to our website.

Hosted by Concordia University and the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), in collaboration with scholars from McGill University, Université de Montréal, and UQAM.

How do we recognize and celebrate oral history work happening beyond the university?

The Ted Little Prize honours a COHDS community affiliate whose work has made a meaningful contribution through oral history research-creation, arts-based storytelling, and/or creative, place-based oral history practice.

Named after Dr. Ted Little, a longtime COHDS affiliate and advocate for community-engaged storytelling, this annual award recognizes those using oral history and the arts to foster connection, dialogue, and change in their communities.

Self-nominations are welcome.

𖥔 $500 award
𖥔 Nomination deadline: September 1, 2026, 23:59
𖥔 Submit a one-page nomination (PDF preferred) to: [email protected]
𖥔 Open to COHDS community affiliates (non-student, non-faculty)

The recipient will be announced at the COHDS Annual General Assembly on September 18, 2026.

COHDS Tech Corner . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

If you’re looking for a camera that bridges the gap between ease-of-use and professional-quality output, the Canon XA40 is a standout choice available through COHDS.

Designed with documentary makers, researchers, and hybrid media creators in mind, the XA40 is compact, intuitive, and powerful, making it an ideal companion for oral history projects, interviews, and event documentation.

What makes the XA40 especially appealing is how quickly it gets you from setup to shooting. Its lightweight build and ergonomic design mean you can stay mobile without sacrificing stability or quality. Whether you're recording in a controlled indoor environment or adapting to a fast-moving fieldwork scenario, this camera is built to keep up.

The integrated 20x optical zoom lens allows you to capture everything from wide establishing shots to detailed close-ups without changing lenses. Combined with 4K UHD recording, your footage comes out crisp, detailed, and ready for both archival and exhibition purposes.

The 2026 COHDS Summer Institute “Storytelling and Social Justice” has officially wrapped up, ending on a note of tremendous energy and enthusiasm. Participants and organizers delighted in learning from and with each other over the past few weeks as students, artists, scholars, and community partners came together for an intensive exploration of storytelling, social justice, activism, and oral history methodologies rooted in community care and connection.

Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Explore grant, the 2026 Summer Institute centered on the theme "Social Justice and Storytelling: Towards Post-Traumatic, Intergenerational Growth." This year, VK Preston and Florent To Lay (@ SKOL) had the privilege of serving as co-instructors, alongside Gabryelle Iaconetti as Teaching Assistant.

This year’s seminar, which ran from May 13 to May 29, engaged deeply with oral history and creative practice, arts and critical theory, public history, micropublications, and community-facing research. In collaboration with Montreal artist-run Centre des arts actuels SKOL and its COMMUNITIES project, the Institute explored intergenerational collaboration, community spaces, ecology, and 2SLGBTQIA+ artistic practices.

Through hands-on workshops, collaborative projects, and theoretical discussions, students examined the transformative power of storytelling within activist and social justice movements. The Institute also highlighted critical methodologies such as shared authority, oral history performance, and creative forms of micropublication including artist books, graphic novels, photo essays, and zines.

This year’s cohort of students were also incredibly fortunate to hear from and meet with a number of fantastic guest speakers and collaborators, including well-renowned journalist of historic 2SLGBTQIA+ life in Montreal Richard Bugs Burnett; longtime social justice activist Stefan Cristoff; community organizer in Janet Lumb; and social geographer and historian of le***an life in Montreal Dr. Julie Podmore, and Professors Barbara Lorenzkowski, Steven High, and Désirée Rochat, as well as other members of the COHDS and Montreal arts communities.

Oral history interviews are often described as conversations. But what happens when the narrator and interviewer leave the same interview with entirely different experiences?

Drawing from her forthcoming book Learning to Listen, Martha Norkunas invites participants to examine the complexities of listening in oral history practice. Based on years of listening journals written by graduate students, this workshop explores why miscommunications occur, how meaning is negotiated during interviews, and what we can learn from moments of misunderstanding.

Together, participants will discuss body language, voice inflection, pacing, and the often nonverbal negotiations that shape what is shared, what remains unspoken, and who determines what is appropriate to discuss. Participants will also be invited to reflect on challenging situations that have emerged in their own interviews and consider the cultural, ethical, and interpersonal dimensions of listening.

🕮 ✎𓂃 Please note that participants are required to read Chapter Ten, "Complexities in Listening," from Martha Norkunas's forthcoming book prior to the workshop. The chapter will be provided upon registration.

𖥔 June 11 | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
𖥔 LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
𖥔 Free and open to all (registration required through our website)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá territory, in Tiohtiá/Montreal.

Much of oral history research begins with recording memories. But how do we make sense of the stories we collect? How do we move from memory to history?

Drawing on over four decades of teaching and practicing oral history, Alistair Thomson will explore a range of approaches to interpreting interviews and memories. Together, participants will consider how researchers have understood memory as a historical source, the many factors that shape personal narratives, and the ethical questions that arise when interpreting the lives and stories of others.

Through interview excerpts from Alistair's work with migrants and war veterans, the workshop will introduce methods of narrative analysis that attend to voice, gesture, language, and storytelling. Participants will also explore ways of identifying broader historical themes across multiple interviews and leave with practical tools, ideas, and readings to support their own oral history projects.

𖥔 June 10 | 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
𖥔 LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
𖥔 Free and open to all (registration required through our website)

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá territory, in Tiohtiá/Montreal.

COHDS Tech Corner . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

When it comes to capturing strong audio, what you hear matters just as much as what you record. The TASCAM TH-05 headphones offer an accessible, reliable way to monitor sound with clarity, making them a go-to choice for COHDS-affiliated projects.

Designed for recording, editing, and critical listening, these headphones deliver a clean, balanced, and honest representation of your audio, helping you catch subtle details and make confident decisions in the field or in the lab.

The TH-05 headphones are built with usability in mind. Their closed-back, over-ear design provides isolation from surrounding noise while minimizing sound bleed, essential when recording interviews or working in shared spaces. Here at COHDS we have upwards of 50 headphones available for our affiliates.

Whether you need one pair to shoot an interview or 15 pairs for an oral history exhibition, we’ve got you!