Overview
Welcome to the website of the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project (OHEM for short). The project involved 100 long-form oral history interviews with environmentalists, and witness seminars across the four nations of the UK. It was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council between 2022 and 2025. This website documents the aims, methods, activities and outputs of the project, including the archive itself (held at the British Library) and an Open Access book (published by UCL Press in November 2026).
The project involved the creation of an accessible high-quality national archive of oral history recordings with environmental activists and policy-makers in the UK over the last fifty years. We sought to create a valuable resource for the future, documenting the history and lived experience of environmental campaigns through the words of those most intimately involved, including those whose contributions have been overlooked. The project was a collaboration between Royal Holloway, the British Library, the Royal Geographical Society, Friends of the Earth and the Wildlife Trusts.
We undertook ‘life story’ interviews with 101 people involved in protests, policies and projects since the early 1970s, from direct actions at power stations, through parliamentary work, the Climate Act and UN agreements, to developing city farms, cycle ways and community energy. These interviews are available to listen to at the British Library, alongside transcriptions extending to over six million words, and an openly accessible book based on these stories is published by UCL Press in November 2026. This book contains direct links to hundreds of freely available audio clips from the larger archive. Also on this website is a set of learning resources, including podcasts and Infographics, co-created with the Royal Geographical Society.
For full details of the book, Voices for Change: An Oral History of the Environmental Movement in the UK, 1970-2020, see the UCL Press webpage
For access to our other publications and learning resources, see project outputs
For details of the archive launch event at the British Library in October 2025, including a roundtable discussion with leaders of major UK environmental organisations, see the Royal Holloway news page
