My great passion is connecting oral history’s artistry and ethic to projects that facilitate ethical and meaningful dialogue across difference. I give presentations and workshops widely in this space. Some of this work has included: using the language of theatre to deepen the practice of oral history (Push Play, 2016-current, with Liza Zapol); preparing theatre students in North Dakota to interview women in an oil town (North Dakota State University artist-in-residence, 2017); teaching human rights advocates from around the globe how to incorporate oral history tools into their community-based activism (Columbia University’s Human Rights Advocates Program, 2010-2014); training diverse Philadelphians to conduct interviews with people with intellectual disabilities who live in a residential institution or work in a sheltered workshop (Temple University’s A Fierce Kind of Love, 2014-2016); collaborating with people with Down syndrome to share their stories as an act of advocacy (Nothing About Us Without Us, 2012-2013); and teaching a multi-day institute to students working in fields from culinary to social work, on doing mixed-ability interviews (Oral History Summer School, 2015).

Header photo of me presenting at Oral History Summer School in June, 2016, Hudson, New York. Photo credit Walter Hergt