The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing We are a research centre based at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford, supporting life-write

From the ancient Greeks to the modern publishing world, the writing of lives has been of perennial fascination. Scientists, soldiers, scholars, politicians, writers and artists, ordinary men and women: life-writing is among the richest and most varied of genres. The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, encourages those who write biography and memoir, and

those who undertake research on existent life-narratives. OCLW organises and holds events and research designed to nurture life-writing in theory and practice. We hold lectures, seminars, workshops, conferences, panel discussions and more. Many of our events are podcast and available for download from our website (www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clusters/life-writing) and our blog (oxlifewriting.wordpress.com). We have a number of DPhil students and research fellows attached to OCLW, who are pursuing research into various aspects of life-writing at the University of Oxford. We offer Visiting Scholarship and Visiting Doctoral Studentship schemes for those at external institutions wishing to pursue research into life-writing at OCLW (please see our website). Most of our events (unless otherwise stated) are free of charge and open to all. OCLW is directed by eminent biographer Professor Dame Hermione Lee, associate directed by Professor Elleke Boehmer, and its Weinrebe Research Fellow and administrator is Dr Kate Kennedy. Please email [email protected] or visit www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clusters/life-writing for more information.

31/03/2022

Call for Papers for the Launch and Winter Symposium – “Writing Tasmanian Lives” 22–24 June 2022

Writing Lives is a new research program based in the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania, harnessing existing expertise and building capacity in critical studies of life writing, biography, oral history, microhistory, history of ideas, memoir, and personal writing such as letters and diaries. Our program is working to foster dialogue about life writing as a form and genre that crosses disciplinary boundaries and embraces possibilities offered by texts, objects, and nonhuman as well as human lives.

For the life-writing academics out there, here's a call for papers which may be of interest:
28/06/2021

For the life-writing academics out there, here's a call for papers which may be of interest:

Much has been written in academia about narrating one’s own life and the lives of others that scholars have subsumed amongst others under life writing which includes a multiplicity of different (sub-)genres such as autobiography, biography or diary (see, e.g., Smith and Watson 2010). In the last d...

Richard Mabey is the 'bubbling wellspring of modern nature writing', as Alexandra Harris describes him in her introducti...
04/05/2021

Richard Mabey is the 'bubbling wellspring of modern nature writing', as Alexandra Harris describes him in her introduction to this term's Weinrebe conversation.

Richard and Alexandra delve into a life-writing classic, Richard's biography of naturalist Gilbert White (1720-1793), which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 1986. They discuss what drew Richard to write about 'this quiet curate of Selbourne' and the ways in which a writer's sense of place might shape their writing.

Here's the first full-length episode of our new podcast series, Writing Lives: Biography and Beyond

Celebrated nature writer Richard Mabey discusses the relationship between biography, nature, and place with literary critic Alexandra Harris. They delve into a life-writing classic, Richard's biography of the eighteenth-century naturalist Gilbert White, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 198...

Here's the trailer for our soon-to-be launched new podcast series, Writing Lives: Biography and Beyond, with absolutely ...
28/04/2021

Here's the trailer for our soon-to-be launched new podcast series, Writing Lives: Biography and Beyond, with absolutely beautiful cover art from Una of Una Comics (currently a Visiting Scholar at OCLW).

It launches on 6 May with guests including Plath biographer Heather Clark, nature writer Richard Mabey, and more.

Join biographer Kate Kennedy and poet Katherine Collins as they talk to leading biographers and academics from around the world. From medieval records to social media trends, diaries to musical scores, they explore how we write about lives from every perspective. Find out more about OCLW: www.oclw.w...

For those interested, the Orient-Institut Istanbul has kindly invited OCLW enthusiasts to join their Spring lecture seri...
27/04/2021

For those interested, the Orient-Institut Istanbul has kindly invited OCLW enthusiasts to join their Spring lecture series, “Life Narratives and Gender: Voices of Women in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean.”

Prof. Leigh Gilmore will give the opening lecture tomorrow, April 28th.

Please click here to view the full program:https://www.oiist.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/LIFE_NARRATIVES_BOOKLET_SPREAD.pdf

Heidi Williamson was part of a community that suffered an inconceivable tragedy, the Dunblane Primary School shooting. H...
10/10/2020

Heidi Williamson was part of a community that suffered an inconceivable tragedy, the Dunblane Primary School shooting. Her third collection, Return by Minor Road , explores the lasting impact of being an ‘incoherent bystander’.

http://ow.ly/v3dj50BLS5s

Rachel Mairs explores the potential of phrasebooks as a source for life-writing, taking as case studies several native A...
07/10/2020

Rachel Mairs explores the potential of phrasebooks as a source for life-writing, taking as case studies several native Arabic speakers who worked closely with European archaeologists and missionaries in the nineteenth century.

http://ow.ly/g9DF50BKNA3

Life-writing frequently has to negotiate the non-verbal: the creative minds of composers, choreographers or artists; the...
06/10/2020

Life-writing frequently has to negotiate the non-verbal: the creative minds of composers, choreographers or artists; the sound and light of childhood; the world of animal experience. How can these worlds be captured in words?

http://ow.ly/2SFg50BKJqW

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