Thursday 19th February, 7.30, Holy Trinity Church, Church St, Haddington – Caroline Milligan, ethnologist from the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh
Summary of the talk:
Caroline is going to tell us a little of the history and motivations for the RESP and about the collection of recordings made with people in and from East Lothian. We’re also going to watch part of the film, Haddington Voices, which was made by Caroline’s RESP colleagues, Mark Mulhern and Colin Gateley, which celebrates the fieldwork recordings and the people who have contributed to the East Lothian RESP.
Caroline Milligan is an ethnologist and is based at the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh where she is Archives Assistant and Research Officer with the Regional Ethnology of Scotland Archive Project. (RESP for short.)
The RESP facilitates oral history work in the community and has been active in East Lothian since 2018, working in partnership with colleagues at the John Gray Centre and with many, many members of the community who have volunteered with the Project as both fieldworkers and interviewees.
Background
The Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project (RESP) is a community-focused oral history research project which was developed by the European Ethnological Research Centre and is now based within the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh. The project aims to facilitate oral history collecting within local communities and to then make those recordings widely available for research and enjoyment via a dedicated website. The Project was conceived and developed as a complimentary resource for the 13-volume, Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, which had, until 2011, been the main focus of research activity for the EERC for a number of years and had recently been concluded.
Ethnology is the study of culture in everyday life from the perspective of the individual and can encompass everything from childhood play and our experiences of nature to descriptions of working environments and the customs of shared experiences, such as birth or marriage. For ethnologists, by gathering a wide range of first-person accounts of what it was like to live in a particular place and at a particular time, we feel we can reflect a more nuanced and complex understanding of our shared cultural past. By then comparing recordings from one area with those made in another time or place, we can see how continuity and change happen over space and time.
Since 2018, RESP activity has been primarily focused in East Lothian, where we have worked closely with colleagues Ruth Fyfe and Fran Woodrow at the John Gray Centre and with the many volunteer fieldworkers and interviewees who have contributed their time, energy, enthusiasm and expertise to the Project.
In her talk on the work of the RESP in East Lothian, Caroline Milligan will speak a little about the motivation for this project and how the RESP aspirations have been realised in East Lothian. As well as providing an overview of the collection, which now runs to over 300 recordings and over 200 hours of audio, Caroline will also present a shorter version of the film, Haddington Voices, which was made to showcase the East Lothian recordings, especially those relating to life in Haddington – and also the people who made the recordings, both the interviewers and the interviewees.
Details of publications
As well as the 13-volume compendium, the EERC has published a number of publications including the Flashbacks and Regional Flashback series, based on primary sources. Examples include:
Going to the Berries: Voices of Perthshire and Angus Seasonal Workers by Roger Leitch, NMS Publishing, 2020
Border Mills: Lives of Peebleshire Textile Workers by Ian MacDougall, NMS Publishing, 2023
From Land to Rail: Life and Times of Andrew Ramage 1854-1917, Ed. Caroline Milligan and Mark A Mulhern, NMS Publishing, 2014
Jock’s Jocks: Voices of Scottish Soldiers from the First World War, by Jock Duncan, NMS Publishing, 2019
The available titles can be purchased via the NMS website: https://shop.nms.ac.uk/collections/books
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