Research projects that utilise oral history and other audiovisual interview methods face a key challenge: in accordance with the FAIR principles, audiovisual research data should be as easily accessible as possible, for example by being made available in an online archive. In oral history projects, this objective often coincides with the interviewees’ wish to make their stories accessible to the public and to future generations. However, how can sensitive research data be made available for access and re-use without putting the interviewees at risk? In particular, how can individuals who require special protection be enabled to participate meaningfully in decisions regarding the presentation and re-use of their interviews – without protective measures turning into a loss of agency for the individuals concerned? A central question in this context – one that has received little systematic attention in research practice to date – is the anonymisation of audiovisual sources. Anonymisation strategies – such as alterations to the transcript, the distortion of voices and images, and the modification of accompanying metadata, or through the differentiated allocation of access rights –are key elements here, yet their practical technical implementation raises numerous methodological and ethical questions. In practice, these approaches are also influenced by varying disciplinary traditions and, at times, methodological reservations regarding research data that can no longer be fully contextualised.

In this interdisciplinary research workshop, various methods of anonymisation – ranging from masking and pseudonymisation to tiered access models – will be presented using a specific interview example and discussed from different perspectives: those of the interviewees, the cataloguers, secondary researchers, archivists, and infrastructure providers.

The workshop is a collaboration between the Digital Interview Collections unit at the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin and the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, as part of the Berlin University Alliance’s “Sharing Multimodal Data” project, in conjunction with the “Medicating Sex” (Collaborative Research Centre 1665, Sexdiversity) at Charité Berlin and the “Beyond Thalidomide” (ERC) project at the University of Vienna.

Although this Workshop is primarily organised as an in-person event, online participation is possible, please mention it when registering.

The working language is German, although contributions in English are welcome.

Please register before 30.9.2026 by writing to annalena.fuchs@charite.de 

Organisers: Birgit Nemec (Universität Wien and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin), Carolin Pommert (Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin), Cord Pagenstecher (Freie Universität Berlin), Tobias Kilgus (Freie Universität Berlin) and Verena Nägel (Freie Universität Berlin).