Marking the 80th anniversary of VE day with a contribution to The Conversation

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Hazel Hall

Today is the 80th anniversary of VE Day. On this date in 1945, the Second World War allies formally accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces.

Amongst the articles published in The Conversation this week to mark the 80th anniversary is ‘VE Day: how personal first-hand accounts help keep everyday narratives of wartime Britain alive’. This article highlights the value of audio to bring the words of ordinary people from the Second World War directly into the present. The content of the article draws on the analysis of audience engagement with Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war in two online formats: (1) text and images on Blipfoto posted from 1st September 2019; (2) an eight episode podcast series that starts with diary entries from early September 1939. The analysis was first presented in an article that I co-authored with Dr Bruce Ryan, Marianne Wilson and Dr Iain McGregor, published in Archives in December 2024. Continue reading →

A new postcard to publicise the Platform to Platform project

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Hazel Hall

Dr Bruce Ryan and I are planning a couple of speaking engagements about our work on Lorna Lloyd and her Diary of the war in the near future, so today we worked on an updated version of our publicity postcard. Above is the front of the version that we are sending to be printed today. If anyone would like a copy when it’s ready, please email me.

‘Podcasting the archive: an evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series’ published

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Hazel Hall

cover image Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association ‘Podcasting the archive: An evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series’ is now available in issue 2 of volume 28 of Archives, published last month. I am a co-author of the article alongside Dr Bruce Ryan, Marianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor.

In this work we compare audience engagement with a Second World War archive presented digitally in two formats as: (1) images and text in a Blipfoto journal, and (2) sound in an eight-episode podcast series (which starts with episode 1 here). The main findings reveal differences in levels of engagement for each presentation in respect of entertainment value, learning opportunities, and emotional response. Flexibility of access and authenticity of the archived material were also found to be important to audience engagement, with the nature of contextual information provided alongside the core archive key to the latter. Here we further understanding of facets of audience engagement with digitised archives while opening up new thinking on means of encouraging the general public to interact in more meaningful ways with historical records. Continue reading →

Lorna Lloyd’s ‘Diary of the war’ features in the ‘Their finest hour’ archive

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Hazel Hall

Earlier this year, the Platform to Platform project team responded to a call from colleagues at the University of Oxford for submissions of Second World War stories to the Their finest hour archive. Continue reading →

Platform to Platform project: 2022/3 review; 2023/4 preview

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Hazel Hall

RSS Diary of the war header page Lorna Lloyd

The diary of the war is available as a podcast series from https://rss.com/podcasts/lornalloyd/

The Platform to platform (P2P) project ran between February and July 2022. In that time the P2P team met its two main aims. The first was to produce a podcast series based on Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war. The second was to use this new audio version of archival content (originally made available as text and images as the LornaL Blipfoto journal between 2019 and 2021) to explore modes of audience engagement with different formats of digitised archive data sets. Continue reading →

HOPSS project presentation at ‘Shaking the archive’

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Hazel Hall

HOPSS project speaker Marianne Wilson

Over the past weekend, between 23rd and 25th June, Queen Margaret University hosted a conference entitled Shaking the archive: reconsidering the role of archives in contemporary society.

Yesterday, on the last morning of the conference, Marianne Wilson represented the whole Heritage organisations and podcasts scoping study (HOPSS) project team* when she delivered a presentation entitled The power of audio: presenting archives via podcasts. Continue reading →

The power of audio – presenting archives via podcasts: submission accepted for Shaking the archive conference, Edinburgh, June 2023

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Hazel Hall

Along with my colleagues Dr Bruce Ryan, Marianne Wilson, and Dr Iain McGregor, I am delighted that the submission that we made earlier this year to the Shaking the archive – reconsidering the role of archives in contemporary society conference has been accepted. Continue reading →

National award recognises the Platform to Platform project: British Records Association Janette Harley Prize 2022 runner-up

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Hazel Hall

The Edinburgh Napier University team that worked on the Platform to Platform (P2P) project to transform Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war into a podcast series is delighted to have learnt that this work has been highly commended as a runner-up for the British Records Association’s (BRA) 2022 Janette Harley Prize. This prize, awarded in memory of archivist Janette Harley (1951-2015), is intended to generate interest in archives, and raise awareness of research and achievements in the world of archives. Continue reading →

The creative use of digitised archives: roundtable to be presented at the BBC at 100 Symposium

Posted on July 18, 2022 by Hazel Hall

The BBC at 100 symposium, organised by Dr Marcus Collins, Reader in Contemporary History and AHRC BBC 100 Fellow at Loughborough University, takes place at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, and online, between 13th and 15th September 2022. A team from the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI), with a colleague from the BBC Archive, is delighted to be presenting at this event. Continue reading →

Lorna Lloyd’s Diary of the war podcast series launch event, Malvern, Tuesday 24th May 2022: registrations open

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Hazel Hall

Great Malvern Priory: venue for the podcast series launch event on Tuesday 24th May 2022

Registrations open today for the launch event of the new podcast series of Lorna’s Lloyd’s Diary of the war. This takes place at Great Malvern Priory in Worcestershire on Tuesday 24th May 2022 from 14:00 onwards.

To register (free of charge), please click on this link. This will take you to the EventBrite page at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lorna-lloyds-diary-of-the-war-podcast-launch-event-tickets-307900246927. Continue reading →

Hazel Hall

Emeritus Professor, Edinburgh Napier University

Tag Archives: podcast