Marie Fritzová
The VI. International Conference of the Czech Oral History Association was held from 6 to 7 February 2019 in Olomouc. The topic of the conference this year was “From Democratization to Democracy: Oral History in the Study of Contemporary History.” It was attended by leading experts on this method from the Czech Republic as well as guests from Slovakia and abroad. This exceptional event took place at the History Department of the Faculty of Arts of the Palacky University Olomouc. It was opened by Professor Miroslav Vaněk, who introduced the morning block dedicated to the follow-up research project of the Oral History Center at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. This project, called “Student generation of 1989 in the time-lapse perspective. Biographical interviews twenty years later” was then presented by the authors and co-authors.
The afternoon program offered two parallel sections HISTORY MILESTONES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ORAL HISTORY, THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ORAL HISTORY, and ORAL HISTORY AND MILITARY HISTORY, ETHNIC AND REGIONAL IDENTITY IN ORAL HISTORY.
In the evening, there was a meeting of COHA members, which presented the annual report on the association’s activities for the past year. This meeting was followed by meeting of the COHA Executive Committee, which discussed important steps for activities for the year 2019. The Committee concluded that COHA redeclared the journal MEMO to be the official association publishing platform. Another conlusion was that, starting this year, the regular workshop on Oral History at Sovinec Castle will take place only once every two years. The main reason for this decision is the lower participation and also lower number of contributions in the year when the COHA conference takes place.
The conference then continued in an informal tone, as the participants met on a social gathering in the evening. The second day the conference ended with a morning program. As the IOHA reporter, I would like to thank all the organizers for a very successful event.
