When ‘life story’ becomes ‘life history’ - an oral history approach.

Oral history is the collection of stories and reminiscences of people who have firsthand knowledge of any number of experiences. The starting point of Maree’s latest work, The Long Road to School, Sea Pictures of a Convent Boarding School, was the collection of life stories that she gathered. The work is in keeping with qualitative research methodology, with multiple approaches and types of oral history. There is an extensive pedagogy behind oral history and gathering personal recollections.

Oral history extends the boundaries of traditional history.

Maree has approached the task of establishing a continuous and cohesive record of 140 years of diocesan history under the main threads and themes of origin, engagement, leadership and culture. These elements are viewed firstly through the lens of ‘public memory’ in archives, library shelves, newspapers and academic discourse. Secondly, there is ‘personal memory’ or oral history of the personal recollections of religious beliefs and practices of people of all ages and cultural backgrounds, as a diversity of experiences, perspectives, interpretations and subjectivities.

This event will be held at 10 am Queensland, Australia time (AEST, no daylight saving).

Dr Maree Ganley spent most of her professional career in leadership roles in secondary girls' and boys' boarding schools in Central and Southeast Queensland. She completed her full-time working life as Director of Advancement of St Leo’s men’s residential college within the University of Queensland.

Maree majored in Education, Religion and Classics in her academic pursuits. She completed her studies with a PhD which examined the impact of regional boarding schools on the social and cultural development of remote regions of Australia such as central western Queensland. The doctoral research resulted in the production of the book The Long Road to School, Sea Pictures of a Convent Boarding School: St Ursula’s Yeppoon founded in 1917 which captured the life and experiences of staff and students of regional boarding schools from the early 20 th century. Australian author and historian Edmund Campion referred to her book as having made a significant contribution to the history of Education in Queensland.

Maree’s ancestors of Irish and German descent arrived in Rockhampton in November 1862, and they lived and worked in many early settlements of the central west.

Currently she is commissioned to write a history of the Diocese of Rockhampton which was officially 140 years old in 2022.

Cover images

Mr. Amua Rushita from Jamii FM Mtwara doing an interview Tanzania 2016 via Wikimeda Commons

Photograph - Teaching Aids Centre, Philips Tape Recorder 1963 via Libraries Tasmania

The only known Goodale Tape Recorder from 1908 / in the private Museum of phonographs in Mariazell / Austria via Wikimedia Commons