About the Program

Founded in 1967, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program is the University of Florida’s award-winning oral history program and home to one of the nation’s most significant oral history collections. SPOHP gathers, preserves, and promotes living histories of people from all walks of life through interviews, teaching and training, archival care, and public engagement. We pursue that mission in four interconnected areas: conducting oral history interviews; producing scholarship and creative activities; teaching and training students and partners; and preserving archival collections while expanding public access to them. 

Through courses, workshops, internships, research collaborations, and community-based projects, SPOHP prepares students and partners to practice oral history thoughtfully and ethically while contributing to a growing archive of voices and experiences. Our interviews support scholarship, teaching, documentaries, exhibitions, and public programming, and they are an essential resource for researchers, educators, journalists, and communities across Florida and beyond. Grounded in ethical oral history practice, SPOHP approaches interviews and archival work with care, collaboration, and a commitment to honoring narrators and their communities. We follow the standards and best practices of the Oral History Association, the field’s primary professional organization. 

Today, SPOHP stewards more than 10,000 interviews and sound recordings documenting Florida, the Southeast, and beyond, with approximately 8,000 interviews publicly accessible through the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC). Our work is grounded in ethical collaboration, accessibility, public engagement, and student training, and we regularly partner with students, faculty, researchers, and community members to document lived experience and bring these histories to broader audiences.