Oral History Summer Institute - Incite at Columbia University
Oral History Summer Institute
- Year Founded 1995
- Institutes Hosted 18
- Alumni 350+
- Contact Amy Starecheski
For over 30 years, we have offered Oral History Summer Institutes, bringing together students, faculty, artists, and activists for intensive training. Each year, we choose a different focus for our institute. We are thrilled, this year, to be collaborating with our friends and colleagues at Oral History Summer School to offer a special five day hands-on intensive training.
Participants work with the Center’s world-class staff, network with oral historians from around the world and go to exhibits in New York City. Each year the institute focuses on a different theme that reflects COH's work from throughout the past year.
Past program themes have included Indigenous memories, rights, and narratives; narrating catastrophe; social change; gender and memory; advocacy and the law; human rights; and popultion health. Past faculty participating in the program have included Mary Marshall Clark, Alessandro Portelli, Peter Bearman, Linda Shopes, and Amy Starecheski.
Apply now for the 2026 Summer Institute
For the 2026 Summer Institute, Columbia Oral History is teaming up with Oral History Summer School (OHSS) to offer a five-day immersive training that covers fundamental interview techniques, project design, and recording/tech tutorials, plus sessions devoted to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, storycircles and transcription. Together, we’ll trace the full arc of an interview, from query to archival deposit. What comes after the archive? We will critique–and propose– “public-facing work,” exploring a range of forms such as sound installation, writing, performance and zines as possible ways to activate oral history in the archive.
About Oral History Summer School
Oral History Summer School is a hands-on rigorous training program that brings together interdisciplinary groups of thinkers to consider the broadest range of applications for collaborative narrative work. Workshop days are a mix of mini-presentations, conversation, tech tutorials, interactive exercises, reading circles, listening sessions, along with walks and optional interviewing. At OHSS, oral history is championed and interrogated as a rich, radical and imperfect practice. We are welcomed into the practice as lovers and critics, with an invitation to break form thoughtfully. We’re excited to bring our independent school to an institutional setting, enlivening the questions and tensions around oral history work in grassroots and institutional spaces. What are the opportunities in each of these spheres and the possibilities for collaboration between the two?
The Institute will take place from August 3 to August 7, 2026.
FAQ
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Workshop tuition is $1500 and includes access to a number of OHSS resources including an OHSS tote bag, workbook, folder, notebook, OHSS e-reader and other digital resources including sample budgets, media choice forms and release forms, use of recording equipment during workshops, and access to our alumni newsletters/network. A very limited number of partial scholarships will be available by application.
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The Summer Institute convenes near Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus at the Incite offices.
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We are not offering housing, though we will provide prospective fellows with a list of low-cost hotels on the Upper West Side and in Harlem.
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We welcome all levels of experience—ranging from seasoned practitioners to those who are interested in learning how to incorporate oral history into their research, organizing, or art.
Regardless of experience level, participants will have an opportunity to expand their ability to conceptualize, build, manage, and conduct oral history work.
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We select a diverse cohort of participants, including students, academics, organizers, and artists.
Often participants attend the Institute as an opportunity to break through an impasse in their work, expand their professional network, and sharpen their skills.
Application Timeline
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May 1, 2026:
Priority application deadline
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June 5, 2026:
Final application deadline