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Who are we?
We convene a multidisciplinary international community of scholars, students, and life-writers. We are a Research Centre based at Wolfson College and affiliated with the Faculty of English at Oxford University.
What do we do?
Our researchers span disciplines such as literature, music, education, archaeology, and history, working across the medical humanities to study lives in medicine, on the oceanic humanities, postcolonial, and polar studies to study southern lives; with BBC Radio 3 on the lives of women composers; and with Ocean Ambassadors to take life-writing beyond words.
What is life-writing?
Life-writing includes every possible way of telling a life-story, from biography and autobiography, through letters and memoir, to bio-fiction, blogs, and social media such as Tweets and Instagram stories. Writers and researchers are increasingly recognizing how much of writing is life-writing, including poetry and fiction. Through life-writing we can find out more about each other and we also understand ourselves better in relation to the past. At the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing we explore and talk about the many different forms through which lives can be written, performed, recited and even sung.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ddmwry5JTa4
How you can get involved:
OCLW is a leading centre for research, and we believe that creativity and scholarship should be accessible to everyone, whatever their background. Most of our events, talks, and podcasts are free to attend, with many offered in hybrid formats or recorded for wider access.
We have long played a central role in inspiring writers and researchers, helping them to explore, develop, and share their work. We offer writing groups and mentoring to anyone working on their own life-writing projects, at any stage. Through initiatives such as our Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers Programme, we are proud to support talented writers who have historically been excluded from literary and academic communities, helping them establish themselves as successful authors.
Moreover, through our longstanding outreach initiatives, OCLW works with disadvantaged social groups, schools, and children with learning difficulties, using life-writing as a tool for communication, storytelling, education, and confidence-building.
The Centre is entirely reliant on the support of its friends and donors to enable its work, and we are hugely grateful to the network of supporters who help it to continue. If you'd like to become part of our vibrant community, please join our Friends Scheme.
