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Oral history
In 2013, as we celebrated our 50th anniversary, the Department of History and the Borthwick Institute for Archives conducted a project to capture an oral history of the University. Fifty people shared their memories and thoughts on the University's first half century, offering a vivid picture of life at York since its inception.
The interviews were carried out by historian and journalist Greg Neale, an honorary visiting fellow at the University and founding editor of BBC History Magazine. He was assisted by student volunteers from across the University.
This was a unique opportunity to gather the memories of people who founded, worked for and studied at the University in its first 50 years. The memories captured by this project inform our own history, the history of the post-war universities, and that of education in general.
Chris Webb, Keeper of Archives at the Borthwick Institute for Archives (2000 to 2019), on the University's oral history project
The interviewees
Among those interviewed were:
- Sir Donald Barron, who from the late 1950s was Treasurer of the York Academic Trust, the group that successfully campaigned for the University to be established
- Sam Asfahani, who capped his student career by carrying the Olympic flame through York on its way to the 2012 London Games.
Other interviewees included some of the first students, tutors and administrative staff, whose recollections vividly evoke the excitement and vision of the University's early days.
The project
Professor Brian Cantor, Vice-Chancellor of the University from 2002 to 2013, commissioned an oral history as an appropriate way to mark York's half century and to create a lasting legacy of the occasion.
The project began in 2012 and completed in our 50th year, 2013.
The fifty audio interviews were archived at the Borthwick Institute for Archives and are available to listen to online through York Digital Library (transcripts are also available).
Short film series
The interviews inspired a series of short films made by students in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media (now part of the School of Arts and Creative Technologies).
