The COVID-19 Oral History Project is a rapid response oral history focused on archiving the lived experience of the COVID-19 epidemic. Based at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), this project emerged from the collective efforts of graduate students in the IUPUI Public History and American Studies Programs. The COVID-19 Oral History Project is housed at the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute. It is a partner project with The Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid19.

This project is designed so that professional researchers and the broader public can create and upload their oral histories to our database. They are seeking researchers with experience conducting oral histories or ethnographies to help conduct a series of formal oral histories and also offering a series of workshops to train members of the public to conduct oral histories in their communities.

All the data that participants collect and produce will be open access, open source and shared with researchers and the public through the IUPUI Library and the Covid-19 Archive.

The dataset will serve as

1. an historical archive that compiles oral histories about the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. a tool that allows individuals and communities to express their understandings, hopes, beliefs, and values about the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. a resource to help researchers, policy makers, activists, artists, and communities interpret and respond to current and future pandemics.