The National Humanities Center launched its COVID-19 Oral History Project in 2021 to capture and preserve experiences of a unique time in our medical and social history. The project is dedicated to representing the diverse perspectives of those who have been directly involved in pandemic response efforts in hospitals and clinics but whose stories have gone untold.
To accomplish this goal, we have partnered with institutions and individuals across the country to train student interviewers to ethically and responsibly collect oral histories. This is the first step in a larger initiative to use personal narratives to catalyze conversations at the local and national levels and influence positive structural changes in healthcare.
The COVID-19 Oral History Project connects the next generation of humanists and healthcare professionals with today’s frontline workers to tell the unheard stories of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is committed to interviewing diverse medical professionals around the country and building strong connections between student interviewers and their local medical communities. We believe that narrative medicine has the power to address issues of equity and accessibility in healthcare, and we are dedicated to facilitating conversations that will catalyze positive structural change.
Project Leadership
Jacqueline Kellish (founder and director) is the director of public engagement at the National Humanities Center. She holds a PhD in English from Duke University, as well as an MA in the social sciences and a BA in political science from the University of Chicago. Kellish’s work is motivated by her commitment to using humanistic and social scientific methods to inspire communal engagement and reflection. She has designed and taught interdisciplinary courses on the role and cultural representations of women in twentieth-century media and on the politics and ethics of the literary canon. Previously, she served as the associate editor for the Duke University Press journal NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction.
Jane McGrail is an instructional designer for Saint Anselm College and acts as the head of education and outreach for the COVID-19 Oral History Project. She holds a PhD in rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross. McGrail is committed to building bridges between academic and public communities in service of social justice. Her publicly engaged scholarship has been funded by the Humanities for the Public Good Initiative and the Maynard Adams Fellowship for the Public Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. McGrail has designed and taught both writing and community-based learning courses and works closely with the COVID-19 Oral History Project’s student interviewers.
Robin Haley-Ivory is the head of digital collections for the COVID-19 Oral History Project and the NHC’s data services librarian. Haley-Ivory earned her MLS at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration in archives and records management and her bachelor’s in information systems from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Since 2018, she has implemented and supported digital asset management and digital preservation best practices at University of North Carolina Wilmington, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the State Archives of North Carolina. Haley-Ivory designed the database for the COVID-19 Oral History Project and manages the project’s digital holdings. She also leads the project’s metadata and transcription efforts, specifically focusing on accessibility and preservation.
Project Support
Institutional Partners
- Eastern Michigan University
- Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & Medicine (Duke University)
- University of California, Irvine School of Medicine
- University of Washington School of Medicine
Project Sponsors
- North Carolina Humanities
- Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund
- RTI International