University of York Oral History

In 2013, to mark its 50th anniversary, the University undertook an oral history project to capture the memories and opinions of 50 people who played a part in the University's first half century.

The resource allows visitors to hear the voices of those who helped build York into one of the world’s most successful new universities.

Interviews & transcripts

The audio files and transcripts are lodged with the University Archive. You can read the transcripts from the Oral History interviews from the University Archive catalogue:

Oral History project

The catalogue lists the interviews, their length and summaries of the content and provides links to edited transcripts that allow word and subject searches. The audio files cannot currently be streamed online, but can be accessed by prior arrangement in the Borthwick's searchroom. Please contact the Borthwick Institute to enquire about audio access.

The interviews

Interviewees range from Sir Donald Barron, last survivor from the Trust set up in the 1950s to campaign for York to have its own university, to Sam Asfahani, who capped his student career by carrying the Olympic flame through the city on its way to the 2012 London Games.

Other interviewees include 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, then Vice Chancellor of the University, decided that an oral history would be an appropriate way to mark York's half century and to create a lasting legacy of the occasion.

The project commenced in 2012 and was supervised by a working group chaired by the historian Professor Mark Ormrod, Dean for the Humanities, and Hilary Layton, Director of Internationalisation.

The interviews were conducted by Greg Neale, Founding Editor of BBC History Magazine and an honorary Visiting Fellow at the University.

Interviews were completed by the first half of 2013. Student volunteers from the Department of History also worked on the project, which has in turn inspired a series of short films made by students in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies.

Further information about the Oral history project can be found on the University of York's 50th Anniversary web pages.

The future

We hope to continue to add new interviews to the oral history project in future years, creating a lively, growing collection of voices that help recall and understand York's continuing story.

It should be both a valuable resource for future historians, as well as new generations of alumni.