Oral History Review Advance Access originally published online on September 11, 2009
Oral History Review 2009 36(2):i; doi:10.1093/ohr/ohp075
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Community and Individual Memory: An Introduction
Paul Thompson is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Essex and a Research Fellow at the Young Foundation. He is Founder-Editor of Oral History and Founder of the National Life Story Collection at the British Library. He is a pioneer of oral history in Europe and author of the international classic The Voice of the Past. His other books include The Edwardians and Living the Fishing. He is coauthor of Pathways to Social Class and Growing Up in Stepfamilies and most recently, Jamaican Hands Across the Atlantic.
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This group of three papers was given in their first versions in a session on collective and individual memory given at my retirement conference on "Community and Creativity," which was held at the University of Essex on May 16–17, 2008. By a happy coincidence, we have been able to publish eight papers from the conference as part of the fortieth anniversary issue of Oral History (Vol. 37, No. 2, Autumn 2009) for I had launched its very first issue in December 1969. The newsletter was the seed not only of the future journal but also of the Oral History Society and to an extent also of the future international movement.
I have been very fortunate in those I have worked with since then, and many were present as participants and speakers at the conference in 2008: past and present Essex colleagues and students, coresearchers, colleagues from Oral History, and