Australian Lesbian and Gay Life Stories: A National Oral History Project

ABSTRACT

Lesbian and gay Australians have lived through extraordinary social change over the past six decades as attitudes towards homosexuality have shifted significantly. This article explores a collaborative project with the National Library of Australia, which was the first nation-wide oral history project to investigate the impact of these changes in the intimate lives of different generations of gay men and lesbians. Sixty men and women across Australia were interviewed as part of the project. This article outlines the methodological framework and the particular challenges and opportunities presented by an oral history project that involves members of the lesbian and gay population. It notes the increased opportunities to live an ‘ordinary’ life available to many lesbian and gay individuals and the way this was reflected in interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Robert Reynolds is Associate Professor in Modern History at Macquarie University. Shirleene Robinson is Vice Chancellor's Innovation Fellow in Modern History at Macquarie University. Robert's major publications include From Camp to Queer: Remaking the Australian Homosexual (2002) and What Happened to Gay Life? (2007).

Shirleene Robinson is Vice Chancellor's Innovation Fellow in Modern History at Macquarie University. Her major publications include Something like Slavery? Queensland's Aboriginal child workers, 1842-1945 (2008) and the edited collection Homophobia: An Australian History (2008). Robert Reynolds and Shirleene Robinson are also the authors of the recent Gay and Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian Stories from a Social Revolution (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number LP120200315].