This is an online gateway to oral histories that illuminate various aspects of regulatory governance. Most commonly, this means interviews with regulators, the regulated, or political actors who were instrumental in creating or changing regulatory agencies or frameworks—usually lawyers, judges, and legislators, but also grassroots activists, industry lobbyists, and interested academics.

We have designed several ways of finding relevant oral history projects:

By regulated industry or issue – Find oral histories based on the industry, sector, or broad issue that is regulated. This option allows you to search for collections that relate specifically to health care, agriculture, labor, the environment, etc.

By project name – Find oral history collections based on their originating project. This allows you to scan all project titles for a broader sense of the themes and topics that researchers organized their collections around.

By repository – Find oral history collections based on their archival affiliation. This allows you to look for oral history collections in specific universities, historical societies, government libraries, and so on.

By regulatory body – Find oral histories of particular types of regulatory agency, commission, or level. Go here if you know you are looking for oral histories of a specific regulatory agency such as the FCC or if you want to see all oral history collections organized around, for instance, legislative bodies.

We have also highlighted collections that have some online access—usually accessible digital transcripts, but also in some cases audio and accompanying photos.

If you know of relevant collections that you do not find catalogued on this site, please complete this short survey or contact us at regulatory.oralhistory@duke.edu.