Pre-PHD Submission Presentation

"My research explored different approaches to oral history to recover individual and social history in Solomon Islands since the end of the Pacific War in 1945. I gathered archival materials, life histories, and oral testimonies of older islanders and expatriates who grew up during the colonial era (1893-1978) and worked in the independence era (1978- 2016). More specifically, my three case studies consisted of recording the life histories of four public figures in politics, government, and civil society; five Australian missionary nurses who worked together on Malaita from 1968 to 1984; and 25 nurses who trained in the colonial nursing system and became senior nursing officers after independence. The analysis connects the lives and careers of these participants – at the micro level – with the social history of Solomon Islands at the meso- and macro-levels. I also explore practical and theoretical issues involved in doing oral history through an explanatory model with four domains (Visual-Oral-Textual- Numerical). ‘When a person dies, a library is lost’ is a common aphorism to which I add, ‘and when an oral history is recorded, a library is saved’."