Leyla Vural (2014)

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I have been working as an independent oral historian, based in New York City, since I completed the OHMA program in May 2015. My work has included projects about neighborhood change and efforts to preserve sites of cultural importance in working-class communities and communities of color; a project about New York City’s potter’s field; interviews with LGBTQ New Yorkers for the Stonewall National Monument; and interviews with folklorists, musicians, craftspeople, and historians for a series of cultural audio tours of Sligo and Donegal, Ireland. For an ongoing project I developed for The Rockefeller University, I am interviewing pre-eminent scientists and editing each interview into a short film about the experience of discovery. I am an international affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University in Montréal. In 2016, the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College selected my piece on ethical listening as a “favorite essay” and I was the storyteller at a conference at the U.N. on sustainable energy for all. I have a Ph.D. in geography from Rutgers University and worked in the labor movement for 20 years before joining the OHMA program. Samples of my work are available at www.lvcomm.com.