Emotional Labour in Oral History Research: The Hidden Toll

Emotional Labour in Oral History critically appraises the many complex ways in which emotion management features in oral history research and its specific implications for the researcher.

Uniquely, this volume draws on oral historians’ personal accounts of conducting sensitive research and assesses the applicability of the term emotional labour to this work. It examines how oral historians may perform emotional labour, highlighting the often-hidden emotional toll it takes on them. The volume considers how the emotionally taxing implications of conducting sensitive research may be exacerbated or mitigated by the institutional relations and contexts in which the researcher works. The authors evaluate recommendations from related disciplinary fields for ways of supporting researchers and consider how an ethics of care can be fostered in local research environments. Emotional Labour in Oral History engages critically with theories of emotion, conceptualisations of emotional labour, questions of power and positionality, an ethics of care and debate on the impact of neoliberal ideas and policies on the higher education sector.

This book will be of interest to all those using oral history to conduct sensitive research in all locations and at all career stages, including doctoral students, academics new to oral history, established oral historians, community based oral historians, and qualitative researchers in adjacent disciplines.

Jennifer Harding is Professor of Media and Culture at London Metropolitan University. Her research interests include cultural theory, emotions and sexuality. She is a trustee of The Oral History Society and an editor of Oral History. She co-edited Emotions: A cultural studies reader (2009).

Verusca Calabria is Associate Professor of Mental Health Histories at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests include coproduction and the social history of mental healthcare. She is a trustee of The Oral History Society. She co-authored: Oral History in UK Doctoral Research (2024).