Integrative Practice: Oral History, Dress and Disability Studies

Abstract

Oral history practices form a highly suitable methodology for approaching the ‘inter-discipline’ formed between the fields of the history of dress studies and disability studies. Oral history methods have the potential to respond to calls within both fields to reincorporate the body into the academic sphere; to highlight larger, neglected historical themes and perspectives; to foster the concept of disability itself as an analytical tool for design history; and for those who are working to reclaim the cultural and design history of disability. Sensitive use of this informed approach allows for experiential dimensions to be located at the core of research in this area and for the complexities and contradictions inherent in culturally determined concepts to be both acknowledged and interpreted at many stages during the research process. Inherently inclusive in practice, it is a method that responds well to being practised in conjunction with other research methodologies, and as this paper suggests, offers an opportunity for adopting collaborative research in this hybrid area.