The Pilot Project

During the 2005-6 and 2006-7 academic years, Prof. Caroline Humphrey and Dr. Chris Kaplonski ran a pilot project for the Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia, in collaboration with researchers at the International Association for Mongol Studies (IAMS). Approximately 60 interviews were collected and transcribed over the life of the pilot project. These were based both on certain topics, such as living space, the body, or the history of Ulaanbaatar, as well as a few that were intended to look at the relationship between interviewer and interview, by having either close relatives or strangers conduct the interviews. The majority of the interviews were translated into English, with generous funding provided by Khan Bank of Mongolia.

The interviews and translations are currently being integrated into the main project database. They are listed in a separate table, at the bottom of the ‘browse’ and ‘translations’ pages. They are searchable, but it should be noted that as they were run under the pilot project, not as much metadata on the people interviewed or social setting of the interview was collected. Summaries and keywords are also not currently not provided for these interviews.