Oxford Centre for Life-Writing

Description

Life-writing includes every possible way of telling a life-story, from biography and autobiography, through letters and memoir, to bio-fiction, blogs, and social media such as Tweets and Instagram stories. Writers and researchers are increasingly recognizing how much of writing is life-writing, including poetry and fiction. Through life-writing people can find out more about each other and they also understand themselves better in relation to the past.

At the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) members explore and talk about the many different forms through which lives can be written, performed, recited and even sung.

The Centre convenes a multidisciplinary international community of scholars, students, and life-writers. They are a Research Centre based at Wolfson College and affiliated with the Faculty of English at Oxford University.

Its researchers span disciplines such as literature, music, education, archaeology, and history, working across the medical humanities to study lives in medicine, on the oceanic humanities, postcolonial, and polar studies to study southern lives; with BBC Radio 3 on the lives of women composers; and with Ocean Ambassadors to take life-writing beyond words.

As well as being a leading centre for research, OCLW aims to bring its work into the community wherever possible. Most of the Centre's events, talks and podcasts are free, and they work with disadvantaged social groups, schools and with children with learning difficulties to use life-writing to aid communication, tell stories, educate and build confidence. They believe research and creativity should be available to everyone, whatever their social background.

The Centre is entirely reliant on the support of its friends and donors to enable its work, and they are hugely grateful to the network of supporters who help it to continue. They also offer writing groups and mentoring to anyone working on their own life-writing projects, at any stage.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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University affiliation(s)

University of Oxford
Oxford

Partner Infrastructures

Wolfson College Digital Research Cluster

The Wolfson College Digital Research Cluster focuses on work across a variety of disciplines in which the web is the platform, and where sharing of ideas and methodologies could bring mutual benefit. … read more about Wolfson College Digital Research Cluster

Oxford

Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Centre

The Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Centre (THSC) benefits greatly from the unique synergies at Wolfson College. Since its foundation in 2012, it has collaborated with members of the South Asia Research… read more about Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Centre

Oxford

Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research

Life history and life writing research uses life story - whether in the form of oral history, personal narrative, autobiography or biography - as a primary source for the study of history and culture.… read more about Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research

Brighton