On Friday 23 January, the Oral History Network of the Huizinga Institute hosted an inspiring gathering in Utrecht that brought together practices and reflections from Oral History, Transitional Justice, and Memory Studies around our project: The Multivoiced Archive.

During the session we presented our Multivoiced Archive project, in which we explored how oral history archives could move beyond being academic repositories toward spaces for critical and productive dialogue. We reflected on whether connecting oral (hi)stories of different victimized groups and their claims for recognition could contribute to more structural approaches to repair and justice, and whether oral history archives could function as reparatory archives.

Drawing on work developed within our research project on justice and recognition processes for historical injustices, we demonstrated how the concept of multivoicedness is used to reveal resonances between different forms of injustice and their underlying structures. We also shared examples from a recent collaboration with a community archive in Namibia, highlighting the relationship between oral history archives and transitional justice.