Join us for our fall open house, where you can explore our program, meet students and faculty, and hear from program alum.
About this event
Register for OHMA Columbia's Virtual Open House, featuring:
Information session
Virtually meet OHMA students and alums
Presentation by OHMA Alum: Ornella Baganizi
Mini-interviewing workshop taught by OHMA Director Amy Starecheski
OHMA is the first program of its kind: a one-year interdisciplinary Master of Arts degree training students in oral history method and theory. Our graduates work in museums, historical societies, advocacy organizations, media, the arts, education, human rights, and development. OHMA is also excellent preparation for doctoral work in fields like anthropology, history, journalism, and American studies or professional degrees in law, education, or social work.
Jointly run by the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, one of the preeminent oral history centers in the world, and INCITE, a lively hub for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences, OHMA connects students with the intellectual resources of a major research university, and with the intimate society of a small cohort of talented students.
During a year at OHMA, students learn the skills of digital audio and video production and editing, digital archiving, oral history project design and interviewing, and both historical and social science analysis. Working with an OHMA faculty member, each student is guided through the process of creating a thesis. Past projects have taken the form of academic and creative essays, film and audio documentaries, performances, exhibits, and multimedia websites. OHMA students also have access to elective courses taught anywhere within the University and exclusive oral history internship opportunities.
Prospective students are also welcome to meet with the OHMA director or virtually sit-in on one of our classes. Please send us an email (ohma@columbia.edu) to connect!
These events are open to all. For more information or if we can make any of these events more accessible to you please contact Rebecca McGilveray.
Alum Presentation: Ornella Baganizi
Ornella will talk about her OHMA journey and how she created her thesis project titled Umubano mu Bantu: Love Among People. She will share small snippets of the documentary, and talk about her inspirations, challenges of conducting a family oral history project, and reflections after the fact.
Ornella Uwase Baganizi is an Archivist in the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her research interests include Africana Studies, colonial and post-colonial histories of Africa, and decolonial theory. She is particularly interested in ways to decolonise knowledge production of people of African descent. Ornella also studies Swahili intensively and is interested in Swahili cultures and the East African region. She writes poetry both in English and Swahili. For Ornella, love is a central part of all her practices. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Oral History Masters of Arts (2023) and American University (class of 2019) where she studied International Relations with a concentration in Africa.