One of the newest additions to the Developing Humanitarian Medicine’s areas of inquiry is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Oral History Project. Conducted in collaboration with Professor Joël Glasman (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, African History at the University of Bayreuth), the project aims to document and archive the experiences and opinions of USAID staff amidst one of the most significant crises facing humanitarian aid, memory, and data.
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With the initial suspension of US humanitarian spending at the advent of the Trump administration in January 2025 and, in July, the complete termination of the agency, archival content, data, and government websites have been taken down or destroyed and lost to posterity forever. This oral history project aims to capture elements of this critical moment in the history of USAID and the future of humanitarianism, interviewing a wide range of USAID-affiliated individuals including aid workers, officials, contractors, and research associates. We are interested in hearing about your career (before, during, and after USAID), the type of work and/or data involved, and your reflections on the suspension of USAID’s operations and its aftermath. The project will contribute to the creation of a unique archival collection of oral history testimonies on USAID within the wider context of data-gathering archives being taken down if not actively destroyed.
The USAID Oral History Collection will join a growing body of oral histories at the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian Archive, including the Developing Humanitarian Medicine collection and the Attacks on Healthcare Collection, part of the Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare (RIAH) project. The USAID Oral History Project is conducted in coordination with the Organization of American Historians’ Federal Employees and Contractors Oral History Project (lead by Dr. Jason Chernesky), which documents the experiences of federal workers and contractors across the whole United States government since January 2025. These oral history collection efforts offer a means to capture, piece together, and preserve the institutional memory of USAID (and other agencies) for future posterity.
Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) project
Funded in-part by the University of Manchester’s Humanities Strategic Investment Fund, the USAID Oral History Collection is part of the wider upcoming Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) project. The closure of numerous agencies and organisation services worldwide (USAID and otherwise) has resulted in key international archival bodies to be overwhelmed with newly retired material for deposit – just as their own budgets are under extreme pressure. The project is concerned with developing strategies for the salvage, access, preservation and generation of born-digital data and archives in the face of recent cuts to international aid and humanitarian funding. More information on this project will be posted shortly.
If you are interested in participating in the USAID Oral History Project or would like further information, please contact the project archivist, Dr. Courtney Stickland (courtney.stickland@manchester.ac.uk).