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“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, we are planning 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). We are not as yet planning a seminar in the fourth site, Beaumont –Port Arthur, Texas (also a petrochemical region), for limitations of time and financing.” [Note: a further Witness Seminar is now being planned there for January 14, 2017, whose video will also appear on this site.]
“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 we are now planning will bring back some results of our study 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….”
“The small, white-washed classroom at the University in Minatitlán, Veracruz, was packed with a couple dozen people who, although neighbors, had never met. Several members of a fishing cooperative, a pediatrician, a toxicologist from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), a biologist turned environmental activist, a couple of retired oil workers, a Pemex engineer, two medical students, neighbors of the local refinery, and community activists all turned out to discuss relations between Pemex and surrounding communities.
“Invited by my colleague, the historian Christopher Sellers from Stony Brook University, to this unusual witness seminar, participants squeezed around tables set up with tiny voice recorders. I had a supporting role, helping to manage the meeting and translate if necessary. I was also thrilled to visit for the first time Minatitlán and its twin down the road, the port of Coatzacoalcos, the hubs of the oil and petrochemical industry in southern Veracruz and two of the most polluted cities in Mexico.
–From Nicole JeanBaptiste, “Bearing Witness to the Witness Seminar,” (May 11, 2015), Blog of Columbia Oral History Master of Arts Program, New York, NY, USA (consulted 11/28/2016)
“A few weeks ago Christopher Sellers gave a talk on the witness seminar, a tool he’s relied upon quite heavily for an oral history project that he’s leading, which explores the history of an industrial site and its relations to its past workers and surrounding community. Originally developed by the Institute for Contemporary British History (ICBH) the witness seminar has been employed as an alternative interviewing technique for those engaging in oral history collection. In the case of Sellers’s study he brings together 10-12 people with extended but very different perspectives on the history of the hazards of lead and petro-chemicals at four industrial sites in Texas and Mexico.
In a sense learning of the witness seminar as an interview format troubled some of the comforting responses I’ve developed to the oral historian student’s question around what constitutes a really good interview or at least a properly conducted interview….” For more: http://oralhistory.columbia.edu/blog-posts/People/bearing-witness-to-the-witness-seminar
–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 (consulted 11/28/2016);
“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. For more: http://www.histmodbiomed.org/article/what-is-a-witness-seminar