Hundreds of interviews with former activists from the 1968 revolutions which shook Europe have been analysed and put online by an international research team led by historians at Oxford University and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Nearly 500 activists from more than 100 activist networks in 14 European countries have been recorded discussing how they became involved in activism, their experiences in 1968 and what they now think about their activist past.
The interviews have been put into an online database called ‘Around 1968’: Activism, Networks, Trajectories’, which has been launched at Oxford University, thanks to funding from the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust.
Professor Robert Gildea of Oxford University’s Faculty of History, who led the project and interviewed over 60 French activists, said: ‘Around 1968 investigates former activists’ reflections on the revolution 40 years on, looking into their motivations; how their views have changed with age; their backgrounds, networks and interactions with others; and how political and cultural revolutions overlapped in 1968.
Professor Gildea and his international colleagues have come across some interesting findings during their interviews. He said: ‘One thing our project has found is that the revolution was not simply concentrated in France, West Germany and Italy but was in fact a truly European revolution – we’ve even found protests against US military bases in Iceland.
‘Our interviews also revealed that, interestingly, some Eastern European countries have invented a ‘1968 narrative’ as their ticket to being part of the European Community.’
The website can be accessed at https://around1968.modhist.ox.ac.uk/
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AHRC Media contact: Jake Gilmore, Communications Manager, 01793 416021; j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
Notes to Editors:
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £100 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes hundreds of research awards ranging from individual fellowships to major collaborative projects as well as over 1,100 studentship awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories: A failed political revolution that led to an enduring cultural revolution? A disastrous attack on ethical values in the name of drugs, free love and violence? The events of 1968 in cities across Europe have been represented in sharply contrasting narratives. Funded by a major grant from the AHRC, a project based in Oxford’s Modern European History Research Centre (MEHRC) is considering 1968 as a historic moment between postwar austerity and the Thatcher-Reagan years. Its guiding themes are transnationalism and subjectivity: tracing the links between activists in different parts of Europe and collecting oral testimony which both models and subverts existing narratives.
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/Around1968.htm