Participatory Oral History — Community-Centered Memory Research

Participatory oral history is a qualitative research design in which community members act as co-researchers alongside academic investigators to collect, interpret, and share first-person accounts of lived experience and collective memory. Drawing on Michael Frisch's concept of 'shared authority,' it repositions research participants as active agents in the knowledge-production process rather than passive informants, making it especially powerful for documenting marginalized voices and community-held histories that would otherwise remain invisible in official archives.