Working with difficult stories

In June 2024 Lucy Noakes and Alix Green led a two day workshop, ‘Working with Difficult Stories: Strategies to Care for Researchers and Their Subjects’ at the Institute of Historical Research London.

Generously supported by the CHASE AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership and the Institute of Historical Research the workshop offered an opportunity for research students to come together and discuss the ways that their work engaged with ‘difficult stories’, whether these be the ethics involved in working with traumatised or marginalised peoples, questions about how we represent difficult pasts, or the ways in which engagement with divisive histories might build understanding in the present.

The first day saw the workshop led by three experienced academics. Dr Lucy Newby (Manchester Metropolitan University) drew on her experience of researching youth involvement in paramilitaries to lead a workshop on techniques that oral historians have used to explore difficult pasts. In the afternoon the Polish academic and film-maker Alina Dobrowski showed her documentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and discussed interviewing the bereaved, and Juanita Cox and Eva Hayes de Kalaf (Institute of Historical Research) introduced their AHRC-funded project examining the Windrush scandal and the ethical issues raised through oral history interviews.

The second day was led by our colleagues at Essex Shaul Bar Heim and Zibiah Loakthar and focused on the creation of a Toolkit for researchers working with difficult stories. Lucy Newby and Louise Rodwell (PhD student at the University of Essex) led on the creation of the Toolkit which is hosted on the CHASE AHRC website.