Rosie Wild

Rosie is a freelance writer, researcher and community historian. Her first experience of oral history was interviewing a dozen former Black Power activists to supplement archival research for her 2008 PhD thesis ‘Black was the colour of our fight.’ Black Power in Britain 1955-1976, Since moving to Bristol, she has worked as a community historian, using oral history to help marginalised communities research, document and celebrate their hidden histories. She co-created a series of exhibitions with young New Travellers across the South West and used the oral histories they collected to create the pamphlet, New Travellers, Old Story for The Children’s Society. Most recently she has worked as a Community History Worker for Self Injury Support, leading a project to use community volunteers to create a digital archive of oral histories around the creation of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women in the late 1980s. You can see the results at www.womenlisteningtowomen.org.uk. Other recent work has included researching writing about MI5 and Special Branch files released by the Undercover Policing Inquiry to learn more about the impact of spycops on Britain’s political protest movements from 1968 onwards. You can read her findings about Black Power, in collaboration with the Undercover Research Group’s Eveline Lubbers, on the Special Branch Files Project website.