Together or apart? Doing biographical research and oral history in an interdisciplinary context

Abstract

This article compares research and analytical approaches with biographical materials in the fields of biographical research in sociology and oral history practised by a historian. The reflection is based on the experience of long-term cooperation between biographical sociologists and oral historians in the Polish research context. These contacts have created a space for the fruitful exchange of experiences in the field as well as for strengthening the researchers’ distinctiveness and disciplinary identity. It also makes it possible to identify various concerns, both mutual and individual, for each research field. The main objective of this article is to share perspectives, highlight the similarities and differences between the two disciplines, and to show concerns related to the practice of oral history and biographical research, especially those close to the boundaries between the two approaches when they use the same tool, that is, the autobiographical narrative interview. The first section of the article focuses on the specifics of each approach. It then describes the different results of the common research practice and their consequences in relation to anonymising, archiving and reanalysing the data. Ethical issues are embedded into the whole course of our argument.