Seminar with IHC’s 2023 Visiting Scholar Sue Onslow, on her experience as an Oral History practitioner, namely interviewing actors in the Zimbabwe independence process.

Oral History Practice & Methodologies

Sue Onslow, a leading scholar in the field of Cold War studies and decolonization, will speak about her experience as an Oral History practitioner and share some of her knowledge on interviewing actors in the Zimbabwe independence process, and the history of the Commonwealth since the 1960s.

Professor Sue Onslow is IHC’s 2023 Visiting Scholar.
She lectured and taught at the London School of Economics (1994-2012) and in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. From 2012 – 2023 she worked at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, in the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she worked as Deputy Director (2015-2020), then Director (2022-23).
She was the lead interviewer on a major oral history project, ‘An Oral History of the Modern Commonwealth’ (1965-2012). Her publications include Co-editor (with Anna-Mart Van Wyk): Southern Africa in the Cold War post-1974 (Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center, 2013). ‘The Commonwealth, Neutralism and Non-Alignment’, International Historical Journal, July 2015; Robert Mugabe (with Martin Plaut) (Ohio University Press, 2018); ‘Tanzania, non-alignment and the Non-Aligned Movement’ in Dimitrijevic & Cavoski, The 60th Anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement (Belgrade, 2021); and ed. (with Lori Maguire) Consuls in the Cold War (Brill Publishers, 2023).
She is a frequent media commentator on the Commonwealth, and Zimbabwe. She is preparing a monograph The Commonwealth in the Cold War Era (Hurst Publishers).

Moderator: Rui Lopes (IHC — FCSH / Birkbeck, University of London)

ATTENDANCE IS FREE