Bronte Gosper (2021)

Bronte Gosper was born and raised in the small town of Orange in Australia. She is a proud Wiradjuri woman who is passionate about making lasting change for Indigenous communities through creating publicly accessible oral historical documentaries. She has recently written and directed a play 'Yiraway (Mirage)' that was an exploration of the illusions that pervade settler Australia seen through the eyes of a Wiradjuri woman.

She graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History. Bronte has interned with Killer Films/Moxie Pictures in New York and completed a semester of exchange at Barnard College. She has a keen interest in Chinese history and Mandarin language and spent 2 months in Shanghai in 2018, studying mandarin at Fudan University. In 2020, Bronte interned with the Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, where she led a community engagement project that informed a research paper investigating the unique challenges faced by indigenous women. I hope to produce a work through OHMA that will give me the opportunity to elevates Indigenous womens' voices at home and in the US. Through recording the histories of Indigenous women involved in advocacy work in the late 20th Century, Bronte hopes to strengthen ties between Native American women and Indigenous Australian women's organisations. She hopes that this documentary will create an archive for future advocates and policy makers while informing the Australian public about issues that are often told for Indigenous women, rather than by them. For the past year, she has worked at FIrst Nations Media as a project support officer. As part of this work, she co-authored a research paper exploring how Indigenous community broadcasters responded to COVID-19. She briefly lived in Jamaica and wants to return as soon as she can!

Her passions include acting, writing plays and music, singing and dancing with friends.

Sydney Mann (2021)

Sydney Mann is a talented communications professional, freelance producer, and public interviewer with a passion for storytelling. Sydney has a multi-faceted background in digital media, including professional experiences in social media research, audio-visual production, and campaign development. 

Sydney graduated from Cornell University in 2018 with a degree in American Studies focused on the relationship between society and mass media in the United States throughout the 20th century, coupled with a minor in English. During her undergraduate career, Sydney interned with American Master’s at WNET: an Emmy-award-winning docu-series profiling America’s most influential artists. Sydney also worked alongside the Creative and Cultural Insights team at Viacom, developing communications strategies for the next generation of digital consumers. 

A trained dialogue facilitator with Cornell’s Intergroup Dialogue Project at Cornell (IDP), a program that makes use of critical dialogue to make meaning across differences, Sydney then became a Digital Assistant for the organization, working across the program’s communications channels to expand its digital presence. Subsequently, Sydney worked at HarperCollins Children’s Publishing as an Advertising Assistant, delivering over 140+ campaigns per season.

Inspired by her experiences as a dialogue facilitator with IDP, Sydney focused her studies at OHMA on interview methodology. Her thesis explored the roles of power, social identity, and cooperative learning during the oral history interview. 

With her OHMA degree, Sydney has continued to produce creative and influential stories for audio. Last summer, she hosted Cornell University’s podcast “Fresh from the Hill: Inside Stories of Noteworthy Cornellians,” and most recently, she conducted oral history interviews for NYU’s media production department on a freelance basis. 

A passionate and empathetic storyteller, Sydney hopes to advance her career as a producer creating stories across radio, documentary, and podcast formats. In her free time, Sydney loves to play piano and write. You can check out Sydney's work at www.sydneywmann.com. 

Dharini Chand (2021)

Dharini Chand (she/her) is an archivist based in Mumbai, India.  

As someone who has always been inclined towards listening and observing, Dharini greatly  appreciates the unique life stories people have. She sees them as an immense, untapped source of  knowledge that needs to be timely and safely recorded. She regularly finds herself using the voice  recorder app on her phone to record stories from people around her. Though an amateur attempt, her  findings formed the base for some of her research work at college and have been instrumental in  motivating her towards seeking a focused academic understanding of oral history.  

Dharini has received a B.A. with a double major in History and Psychology from Sophia College,  Mumbai and a M.A. in Ancient Indian Culture from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Alongside her  M.A., she began working at Cipla Archives where she discovered her love for archiving. Her  primary role of building and managing a personal archive gave her the opportunity to explore life  stories in a new way - through archival objects. In her six years of work, she has closely seen how  the intersection of archival objects and oral history brings about a fuller picture that would have  otherwise been missed. She wants to further explore this, as well as the intersection of narrative  inquiry and oral history through her future research work.  

Dharini’s goal through oral history is simply ‘ask before you can’t’. She broadly identifies her  research interests as - stories which garner interest, stories which garner thought and stories which  garner change. She looks forward to first building a solid theoretical foundation in oral history and  then exploring new ways to approach it.

Caiwei Chen (2021)

Caiwei Chen is a bilingual storyteller, journalist and writer originally from Hubei, China. Before joining OHMA, she was a freelance journalist covering culture, tech and their intersections on Chinese internet. Her work has appeared on publications including Rolling Stone, South China Morning Post, Protocol, SupChina and SixthTone among others, with topics ranging from female stand-up comedians, short form dramas, Chinese masculinity and Beijing’s underground music scene. 

Caiwei’s interest in oral history originated from the trauma that carries across generations in her own family. After spending some time in the media industry, she is excited to continue her studies at Columbia University in order to explore topics including collective memory, cultural transmission in the digital age, audio storytelling and narrative art.

Caiwei is part of Marcast, a Chinese podcast network that aims to create high-quality audio content for global clients and explore the possibilities of audio storytelling. She is the host of Redirect, a cultural critique podcast covering cross-cultural internet trends in Mandarin. Before starting her own, Caiwei worked as a producer for Tech Buzz China, a podcast that takes monthly deep dives into China’s leading tech companies and innovative sectors. She also contributes regularly to Chaoyang Trap, a newsletter about everyday life on the Chinese internet.

In her spare time, Caiwei is a pop culture junkie and avid reader. Caiwei graduated cum laude from China Agricultural University and University of Colorado, Denver with B.A.s in Communications. Learn more about her at www.chencaiwei.com. You can also find her @CaiweiC on Twitter, or other random corners on the internet.

Hannah (Han) Powell (2021)

Han Powell (they/she) is a multimedia artist and filmmaker joining OHMA from unceded Tocobaga land in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

Han graduated from Rollins College in 2018 with a degree in Critical Media and Cultural Studies, and Sexuality, Women’s, and Gender Studies, where they received the Activism and Social Justice Award and Sojourner Truth Award for Combined Academic and Activist Work. Their thesis documentary film, The Pulse of a City, explored the impact of hate-motivated violence on LGBTQ+ bars and clubs in the wake of the Pulse shooting in Orlando, and solidified their belief in storytelling and oral history as a vessel for healing and community-building.

They studied abroad in the Netherlands, where they filmed a documentary centering the experiences of parents raising children in queer, non-nuclear households and highlighting the heteronormative obstacles and limitations of Dutch family law. Han has spent the past three years working in the LGBTQ+ nonprofit field, first as the Pride Coordinator for Equality Florida, then as an LGBTQ+ Program Specialist at Metro Inclusive Health, where they got to realize their dream of planning and directing a queer summer camp. 

Their work is grounded in the tradition of queer Southern organizing and movement building, and they believe that recording and learning from our collective histories is one of our most powerful tools for liberation. Han is currently working on an oral history project documenting the stories of queer and trans Floridians doing organizing, activist, and creative work in their communities (queerflorida.life). 

Ornella Baganizi (2021)

Ornella Baganizi (she/hers) was born in Canada, but is originally from Rwanda. In the Unites States she considers Maryland home. She graduated from American University (Class of 2019). Ornella’s academic interests include Africana Studies, colonial and post-colonial histories of Africa, and decolonization theory. She is eager to explore how oral history can be used as a tool to decolonize education specifically as it relates to producing knowledge of Africa that is nuanced and inclusive of Africans and personal memory. 

While in undergraduate studies, she studied abroad in Arusha, Tanzania where she started learning Swahili through a Boren Scholarship, and Nairobi, Kenya. Her senior year she designed and led students on a two-week service-learning trip to Arusha, Tanzania to explore the country’s history of pan-Africanism and the interplay of marginalized identities, such as women, the youth, and people of the Maasai community. After graduating, Ornella moved back to Tanzania, this time to Mwanza, as a Princeton in Africa Fellow to work for an NGO called Mainsprings.

Her senior year she designed and led students on a two-week service-learning trip to Arusha, Tanzania to explore the country’s history of pan-Africanism and the interplay of marginalized identities, such as women, the youth, and people of the Maasai community. After graduating, Ornella moved back to Tanzania, this time to Mwanza, as a Princeton in Africa Fellow to work for an NGO called Mainsprings.

In this program, Ornella hopes to research and archive her family’s history; from her grandmother being one of the many mixed-race children in Rwanda separated from their mother and brought to live in Belgium, her father being the first person in his family to received a PhD, and many of her family members experiences during the 1994 Genocide. 

Ornella writes poetry and has recently delved into photography. She hopes to cultivate her artistic practices and incorporate these mediums into her thesis project.

Ornella speaks French, English and Swahili. She is excited to join the 2021 OHMA cohort, meeting new people and learning about their stories.

Yiwen Li (2021)

Yiwen Li was born and raised in Jiangsu, China. She graduated from Peking University with double majors in History and Diplomacy in 2020. Since her sophomore year, she’s found her interest in the social history of modern and contemporary China. She believes that the most fascinating thing about history is that every little change in the lives of ordinary people combined to create such a great change in the whole society. As a research method, oral history is particularly critical when studying social history, especially the history of ordinary people. 

In 2017, Yiwen took part in a group organized by Peking University and The Kuok Group to do research on Modes of Eliminating Poverty in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia.  There, she learned some oral interview techniques from the group members majored in Sociology. With their help, she interviewed the villagers from 3 villages in Ulanqab about recent local changes and wrote a research report. This was her first time to learn how to use oral materials. One year later, she went to Yunnan Province with teachers and students from the Department of History to investigate on the role of tourism in eliminating poverty in Yunnan minority inhabited areas. In this program, she proposed that they could interview the traditional craftsmen and she was in charge of the interview. In addition, in 2020-2021, as a member of the Oral History Program - "People from Peking University" , she carried on oral history interview with Chuanxi Zhang, a retired professor from the Department of History of PKU. Professor Zhang shared a lot about his family history and his early experiences of studying and participating in student movements. All these things are little known in the past but can help us glimpse a corner of modern Chinese society. 

Yiwen is thrilled to join the 2021 OHMA cohort to learn more systematically on oral history method and theory and get more prepared for her future research on the social history of modern and contemporary China.

Martina Lancia (2021)

Born and raised in Rome, Martina has a background in contemporary history, business and international cooperation, with degrees from Sapienza University of Rome and LUISS. Having finished the program at OHMA, Martina is set to begin a PhD in Italian Studies at Brown University, with a focus on Pierpaolo Pasolini, the Roman peripheries, and oral histories of Rome.

Martina’s passion for oral history stems from the work of Ascanio Celestini, a playwright and performer who uses oral history to create live shows and films steeped in the contemporary history of both Rome and Italy. After spending time working in the Circolo Gianni Bosio archive on the interviews about the Massacre of Fosse Ardeatine, her thesis on the same topic examined the impact this event left in the individual memories of the women and collective memory of German occupied Rome. 

Her research interests vary from Rome and its contemporary history to ethnomusicology and family stories. 

Martina is an avid reader, especially Post-War Italian literature like Pierpaolo Pasolini, as well as 20th century American literature like Steinbeck, Hemingway and Salinger. She also loves comics like Zerocalcare, Hugo Pratt and Gipi.

The website which houses the digital exhibit of her OHMA these will remain active, with updates to be added from future projects and interviews.

Casey Dooley (2020)

Casey is an oral historian, writer, and inveterate inquirer whose work is motivated by the extraordinary lives of everyday humans as well as the spaces with which they interact. Merging academic curiosity with two decades as an advertising copywriter and chatbot conversation designer, she’s as interested in the history as she is in the ways it might be shared.

Casey’s work focuses on architecture, class, community, and individual experience. In listening to people share their memories of how they’ve lived and where they’ve been, she finds connection, meaning, and new ways to understand the world at large.

Some of her research interests include:

• Oral history as a conflict-resolution tool that encourages dynamic conversations across cultures and through generations. 

• Alternative interpretations of events, individuals, and experiences that are often condemned or considered contentious. (Or, why jury duty can be a blessing.)

• Those who feel called to serve, from members of the clergy to politicians, firefighters, activists, and beyond. 

• Bridges between social stratification, among them community gardens, mixed-income housing, and spectator sports. 

• Birth and death doulas who serve as stewards at the start of life and shepherds at the end. 

• Architectural palimpsests as works of visual art that provide maps to the memories of people and places in transition.

 Casey holds a BA in Journalism from the college that gave her the scholarship that made it possible, as well as an MA in Oral History from Columbia University. When she’s not talking to strangers, Casey enjoys mudlarking, romanticizing Victorian life, delighting in sleight-of-hand magic, scouring microhistories, and being the unofficial hypewoman of the American Midwest.

Rebecca Kiil (2018)

Rebecca Kiil is a writer, oral historian, and filmmaker. Rebecca earned a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University and an M.A. in oral history at Columbia University, and she attended the Salt Institute for graduate studies in documentary film photography. For almost a decade, Rebecca has been working to document the life histories of family and community members who fled their homeland of Estonia during World War II to escape the brutal Soviet and Nazi regimes, then lived for several years in various displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany and Sweden before resettling in the U.S. Before Rebecca's maternal grandmother passed away in 2020 at the age of 102, Rebecca spent seven years filming, researching, and helping document her grandmother’s story, much of which her grandmother hadn't previously shared with anyone. In her oral history work, Rebecca explores themes such as intergenerational trauma, embodied memory, women and war, ethical loneliness, forced migration/displacement, and the refugee regime. Most recently, she has been exploring her obligation, both as human and oral historian, to individuals who have been forcibly disappeared or otherwise silenced and how the practice of oral history can be applied to capture their stories.

Kae Bara Kratcha (2020)

Kae Bara Kratcha (they/them/theirs) is a librarian and an oral historian. They are a member of the 2020 OHMA cohort and graduated from OHMA in February 2023. Kae's work as an oral historian centers on queer and trans experience, speculative oral history, and queer networks in person and online, organizing, and mutual aid in their neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. Find their thesis project, A Cute and Nice Oral History of Dave's Lesbian Bar, on Oral History Works, and listen to or read their speculative oral history project “bodyhome maker” at https://bodyhomemaker.ohmaexhibits.org/. 

Storm Garner (2018)

Born in Washington D.C. but raised in Paris among equal parts artists and international NGO folk, Storm Garner has been based in a New York City since 2006, when she moved from Poland where she'd interned at the OSCE's Human Rights Implementation Meeting to work on a theatrical production at La Mama Experimental Theatre Company as both actor and composer. Since then she has worked in dozens of New York theatre, film, and Artworld productions as an actor, writer, filmmaker, designer, musician, and curator, all the while earning her BA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Columbia University's General Studies program part time, as poor health in her teenage years had interrupted her formal studies.

After production designing and costume designing the dramatic feature film SOUTH MOUNTAIN by Hillary Brougher, which premiered at SXSW in 2019, Storm decided it was time for a break from the film industry, and set her sights on Columbia University’s Oral History Master’s Program, which she hoped would help her someday create an easy-to-use certification system to better connect the film industry with the oral history worlds, to work towards solving issues around underrepresented stories and people at the script development stage.

Though her end goal in the oral history world remains linking it with the film industry, she spent the last several years just focusing on learning the ropes, in the OHMA program and with her first major project, The Queens Night Market Vendor Stories Oral History Project, one close to her heart as it documents the cultural impact of a public endeavor--the Queens International Night Market--she helped her now-husband John Wang get off the ground in 2015. The collection will be primarily archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, with pandemic-era follow-up interviews additionally archived with the Queens Public Library’s Queens Memory Project. Derivative projects include a cookbook with personal narratives from the mostly-immigrant chef vendors' oral histories, called The World Eats Here: Amazing Food and the Inspiring People Who Make It at New York’s Queens Night Market, published May 2020 by The Experiment, and a "Vendor Portrait" short video series in the works. 

Storm has presented twice about the project at Oral History Association Annual Meetings, and looks forward to continuing to learn alongside future OHMA cohorts, the greater oral history world, and as always... lived experience itself.

Tyler Brady (2021)

Since graduating from OHMA in May 2022, I have contributed the interviews from my thesis to the Radio Diaries podcast series The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island, which was  presented at the Tribeca Festival’s Audio Storytelling Program.

Additionally, I am working on a walkumentary covering the history of Scranton’s Lackawanna Avenue focusing on the demolition of some of its historic buildings, and the city’s modern turn towards restoring its downtown. 

I will begin classes at the CUNY Graduate Center in August 2023, where I am pursuing my doctorate in American history. I look forward to working on the stories of modern activists and protest movements

Chalay Chalermkraivuth (2021)

Chalay Chalermkraivuth (she/they) was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of the Teochew diaspora. They are now based in Lenapehoking in so-called Brooklyn, where, at their best, they write and organize.

As an American Studies major at Yale College (2020), she conducted an oral history project and wrote a corresponding thesis about queer Asian Americans’ caregiving practices during the early years of the AIDS crisis. The thesis emerged from her interests in queer and trans organizing, queer-of-color critique, Asian American organizing, and healing justice.

They come to OHMA hoping to convey movement history using one of its most potent vehicles, oral history. They believe that oral history can provide a space for healing, reflection, community-building, and political education, and seek to learn to become a practitioner in this tradition.