–From Website:The History of Modern Biomedicine, sponsored by The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, School of History, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK (accessed October 31, 2024);
“What is a Witness Seminar”
Advances in medical science and medical practice throughout the twentieth century, and especially after the Second World War, have proceeded at such a pace, and with such an intensity, that they provide new and genuine challenges to historians…Thus historians of contemporary medicine and science are increasingly turning, or returning, to the traditional technique of oral history to supplement, or extend, existing records, and to create new resources. Recognizing that many of the principal sources of contemporary medical history are still with us, they are attempting to hear, and record, their accounts. A particularly specialized form of oral history is the Witness Seminar, where several people associated with a particular set of circumstances or events are invited to meet together to discuss, debate, and even disagree about their reminiscences. Originally developed by the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH), this format attracted the attention of the History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group, which was inaugurated by the Wellcome Trust in 1990 (and moved to UCL 2000–10, now at Queen Mary, University of London, as the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group), to bring together clinicians, scientists, historians and others interested in contemporary medical history.
–Maas, Harro. “The Method of the Witness Seminar.” History of Political Economy 50, no. 3 (September 2018): 571–77. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7023506.
“A witness seminar is a moderated group conversation that was introduced as a method of historical inquiry almost simultaneously at the Wellcome History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group (Wellcome group) and the Institute for Contemporary British History in the early 1990s. It aims to bring together key participants to obtain a mix of different perspectives on a specific historical event or episode by an exchange of memories that feed upon one another in interesting and unexpected ways (Tansey 2008). It will depend on the topic under discussion who is “key” or not. A historical understanding of an experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, depends as much on the work of Nobel laureate theoretical physicists as on technicians, programmers, and institutional funding agents who collaborated to construct and conduct the large hadron collider (see, e.g., Galison 1997; Knorr Cetina 1999). It will similarly depend on the topic of a witness seminar in the history of economics to determine what kind of participants will provide the most relevant contribution.”
–From Shweta Marathe, “Conducting the Witness Seminar,” Support for Advocacy and Health Initiative (SATHI); Pune, India, and King’s College, London UK (accessed October 31, 2024)
- “The witness seminar is a group oral history method.
- This method is particularly considered appropriate for data generation on recent developments or events of significance. The technique is essentially a moderated group conversation, through participation of people who have been directly involved in the particular events or processes, including those who drive changes and those who witness and experience them to create the historical records.
- It enables witnesses to share their knowledge regarding their firsthand experiences and observations.”
–From: “The Witness Seminar as Applied to the History of Industrial Communities”
By Christopher Sellers, Stony Brook University (2017, revised 2024)
“The “Witness seminar” is an established technique in the field of social history. The current application of the “witness seminar” method constitutes a vital step in long-standing research project being conducted by Christopher Sellers, Professor of History at Stony Brook University in New York http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/faculty/sellers.html , with funding from the National Science Foundation http://search.engrant.com/project/3SBHlF/the_uneven_development_of_industrial_hazards_lead_and_oil_in_the_u_s_versus_mexico_1930-1990 . Since 2009, this historical and social scientific study has probed the history of four industrial communities, two of them in the US and two of them in Mexico, with a view to comparing their historical dealings especially with industry-related hazards. In the month of August, 2013, I and my team conducted witness seminars for three of the four communities under study: El Paso, Texas, and Chihuahua City, Chihuahua (communities long centered around lead smelters), and Minatitlan-Coatzacoalcos (a network of communities long centered around petrochemical industry). The seminar for the fourth site, Beaumont –Port Arthur, Texas, was held in January 14, 2017.
“In the case of this study, a “witness seminar” means: bringing together 10-12 people with extended but very different perspectives on the history of an industrial site and its relations. In the course of the seminar, they discuss their recollections of this history, each from the standpoint of their own experience. One goal is for key members and representatives of different parts of a community to share their memories, recognize and discuss any conflicting recollections, and arrive at a better understanding if not a reconciliation of differences in what they remember. In this way, the witness seminars bring back some results of interviewing studies to the communities themselves. Other goals are more social scientific and historical. For instance, comparing the discussion of similar questions in such different communities and contexts promises to shed light on: the varieties of narrative available to different people, groups, towns and cultures to frame and understand their pasts; the different ways in which conflicts have unfolded and been contested; the varieties of relations between experts and lay people at the local level, and the ways in which supposedly “universal” knowledge about lead poisoning or benzene’s effects has been taken up—or not—and by which groups, experts and lay people alike….”