Please join us in celebrating the news and accomplishments of our OHMA community!
New/Updated Writings
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New/Updated Writings 〰️
Serious Play students at Columbia University
Cover of Cripping the Archive, featuring a chapter by Nicki Pombier
Nicki Pombier contributed a chapter to Cripping the Archive: Disability, History and Power, edited by Jenifer Barclay and Stefanie Hunt Kennedy
Shanna Farrell authored an Oral History Review Article, "From the Archives: The Promises and Pitfalls of the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Project"
Cover of Narrative Therapy With Older Adults, featuring the work of Lauren Taylor
Lauren Taylor published her work in Narrative Therapy with Older Adults.
Amy Starecheski co-authored an article in International Journal of Qualitative Methods on “Using COVID-19 Oral History Archives to Support Equitable and Creative Solutions to Contemporary Public Health Challenges.”
Nicki Pombier and Liza Zapol co-authored an article in the Fall 2025 issue of Oral History Review, "Serious Play: Teaching to Play in Oral History," documenting the methodology and underlying theory of the course they developed and taught from 2020-2025. In their article, Pombier and Zapol reframe oral history as an embodied, imaginative, creative act.
New/Updated Projects
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New/Updated Projects 〰️
Cover art for Nairy AbdElShafy’s project “Alexandrian Archives”
Nairy AbdElShafy recently prepared and presented a podcast series of 4 episodes in Arabic, produced by Komet Kashakeel. The interviews for the podcast were oral history based. "Alexandrian Archives" is a podcast exploring alternative forms of documenting and archiving the city of Alexandria, using audio, music, sketching and writing.
Shannon Geis is currently working on a public art piece commissioned by the Boulder (CO) Arts Commission to document the Community Assembly process during their update of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. The artwork includes audio from interviews conducted with community assembly members and small scale sculptures created by her creative partner, Becky Wareing Steele. The work is in process and will be completed and presented to the community in November 2025.
Newpaper clipping in relation to Erica Fugger’s Vietnam Summer 1967 Oral History Project
Erica Fugger (OHMA 2012) recently launched the Vietnam Summer 1967 Oral History Project as part of her dissertation research at Rutgers University-Newark. This initiative is currently seeking narrators who participated in the Vietnam Summer anti-war campaign, which brought together a diverse coalition of peace and social justice organizations in 1967 to share critical conversations about the Vietnam War with the American public. The oral histories will be archived through the American Friends Service Committee. The project intends to explore how lessons from Vietnam Summer may be relevant in our present political moment. To learn more about this initiative or express interest in being interviewed, please visit the project website.
Cameron Vanderscoff is working as a Long COVID patient advocate and co-author with doctors into patient-centered modes of care and resilience. He is drawing both on his oral history and narrative medicine work at OHMA, including his thesis.
New/Updated Jobs
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New/Updated Jobs 〰️
Headshot of Ananya Garg
Ananya Garg is excited to share that since completing OHMA coursework this spring, she has been working at the NYC Department of Records and Information Services on their oral history project “Neighborhood Stories.” In her role, she is preparing the collection of 250+ (and counting!) interviews to be published online and expand access to the collection for scholars, researchers, and community members across New York City and beyond.
Elly Kalfus has been working with incarcerated people in Massachusetts to fight for their right to vote since 2015. It's what brought her to OHMA in 2017, and the subject of her thesis. In 2024, the advocacy coalition she organizes with was awarded a multi-year grant from Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery. She is now employed by Harvard as a Student Coordinator for the Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy Project, and is excited to help a new generation of students be involved in abolitionist community organizing!
Exploration of Skills
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Exploration of Skills 〰️
UCHRI May 2025 Gathering at UCLA Botanical Gardens
Crystal Mun-hye Baik is excited to share that she was awarded a Mellon New Directions Fellowship ($300,000), which provides critical resources for mid-career scholars to further their studies and training. She will be pursuing her MLIS at UCLA (for community archiving and preservation) starting from 2026-2027. She also hopes to work with communities directly impacted by war, occupation, and surveillance in safely stewarding cultural histories and memories.
Meave Sheehan has started training for an Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) diploma.
Nina (Yiling) Zhou is currently entering her second year as a PhD student in Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As she continues exploring potential directions for her dissertation, she has found that her research interests may lead her back to Taishan—the region from which many Chinese immigrants to North America originated. Although the path forward is still unfolding, she is excited by the unexpected resonance this has with the oral history project she worked on at OHMA, which also focused on Chinese communities in North America. Looking ahead, she hopes to explore ways to bridge her training in oral history with her current work in religious studies, particularly within the field of Buddhist studies.
This summer, Sarah Maacha attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for two intensive programs where she explored the overlap between design, storytelling, and oral history. These are some of the designs she made during these two months while exploring with new tools and theoretical frameworks.
“Backyard Section” by Sarah Maacha
“RAK collage” by Sarah Maacha
“Cairo Soundmap” by Sarah Maacha