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Changing Identities: Eastern Europeans in Bradford since 1945

Ref: AU 8


Title: Changing Identities: Eastern Europeans in Bradford since 1945

Scope: Audio-tape recordings, with some transcripts, of interviews with members of the ethnic Ukrainian community in Bradford in the 1990s

Dates: 1995-98 (some earlier material from 1983-84)
Level: Fonds
Extent: 3 boxes: 23 audio-tapes plus some transcripts / summaries
Name of creator: The Migration and Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Sheffield Department of History


Administrative / biographical history:

The Project consists of interviews on their personal histories carried out with members of the Ukrainian community in Bradford by Dr Graham Smith of MERC intended to illustrate how the interviewees perceive their identity within that community. It is also designed to extend earlier research with Eastern Europeans carried out by the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit at the Bradford Industrial Museum, particularly the archive of interviews carried out in 1983-84 (2 recordings and 2 transcripts from this work are included in these documents). Several interviews are reinterviews with people interviewed originally in the earlier work. Interviewees include family groups, family members of some of the people interviewed earlier, and younger people born in the UK of immigrant parents. In contrast to the earlier work of the 1980s more than half the interviewees are women.

The Project was designed by Professors Holmes and Jackson of the University of Sheffield, with assistance from Tim Smith of the BHRU and Rob Perks of the National Sound Archive, British Library. Research was carried out by Clare Evans, and further research as well as the interviews by Graham Smith, of MERC. Funding was provided by the University of Sheffield and the Leverhulme Trust.

Availability of the resulting material is dependent in each case on the wishes of the interviewee, and is in certain cases subject to restriction.

In addition, 3 transcripts / summaries of preparatory interviews (CLE 001-003) with members of the Ukrainian community living elsewhere in England conducted by the late Clare Evans are included in the collection.

Ukraines forbidden history, by Tim Smith, Rob Perks and Graham Smith (Stockport, 1998) is based partly on the interviews.