About the project

What is Oral History?

Oral history is a form of storytelling that generally consists of a recorded conversation between a narrator and an interviewer. It is a subjective account that documents the narrator’s experiences, memories, opinions, and perspective. Oral histories are a way to document historical events and create a permanent record. By depositing interviews to an archive, we seek to create a permanent record that is freely and publicly accessible.

Let us know you’re interested in an interview by visiting the “Contact Us” tab. We’ll arrange a meet-and-greet as a way to connect and see if we’re a good fit. This is also a good time to discuss ways to build mutual benefit into the process.
We agree on a date, time, and location that you’re comfortable. We answer any last-minute questions and then press record for ~90 minutes. We’ll likely ask you to describe how you got into your work, your thoughts about care & services in the region, and even speculate about what you think the future holds. Tangents and stories are highly encouraged! At the end of the interview, everyone signs the Deed of Gift Agreement, which allows the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota for long-term preservation and storage.
We create a transcript of the interview, send it to you for approval, and process your honorarium. We post a copy on the “Stories” section of this website and deposit materials (audio, video, transcript, paperwork) to the archives for long-term preservation and storage. We would be delighted to continue our connection and strategize with you about how to best use your interview to benefit your organization.

Mission & Values

We believe that storytelling is a crucial vehicle of the reproductive justice movement, defined by SisterSong as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

Knowing that healthcare has always been under crisis insofar as it is often inequitable and inaccessible, we hope to provide a space to preserve stories as providers, activists, and patients navigate abortion and gender-affirming care in Minnesota. We seek to amplify the voices of those actively working towards reproductive justice, gender justice, and liberation more generally.

Our team seeks to prioritize collaboration and mutual benefit through:

All oral history projects have the potential to be highly extractive. To combat against that, we welcome input at every stage of the process—topic selection, other narrators to include in the project, any aspect of the oral history process, as well as ways to use (or not use) the interviews in the future. It is our job to ensure that narrators needs are heard, that we know the boundaries of what they are not willing to address on recording, and that they ultimately have final control of their story once the transcript is created.
We recognize that our topic area addresses stigmatized and, in some states, criminalized health care. We agree with the Oral History Association that facilitating, preserving, and circulating oral histories is a dynamic process of “mutual responsibility working to ensure that the narrator’s perspective, dignity, privacy, and safety are respected.” Narrators are free to rescind their permission at any time, for any reason. In that case, we would work with them and our archival partners to remove their story.
All narrators receive an honorarium in recognition of their time and labor. We are able to do direct payments, donations to charitable institutions, or deferring payment to other narrators. Remaining flexible in this reciprocity allows us to honor our narrators’ requests and respond better to their needs and wants.
We hope for the project to be mutually beneficial in the current moment. Narrators are welcome and encouraged to use interviews in whatever ways might benefit them:
- Grant Material
- Curriculum Material
- Social Media Content
- Quotable, excerptable material to use for journalists
- Other forms of public presentation
- Networking (we would love to connect you with other people in our network)
- Fundraising — We encourage (we encourage listeners to donate $)
- Personal heirlooms (Document the history of your clinic, practice, institutions)

Project Story

This project started in the summer of 2022 when Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade and dismantled federal protections for abortion care.

As various states criminalized abortion, Minnesota emerged as an outlier in the Midwest by expanding support for essential health services. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey issued executive orders designed to protect out-of-state travelers pursuing essential health services—abortion and gender-affirming care. Legislators also introduced house bills designed to seek to shield people from any legal action that other states may levy. Minnesota quickly gained status as a safe haven, sanctuary, or refuge for those seeking essential health services.

While some Minnesotans embraced these labels as positive affirmations of progress, others warned that this rhetoric belies the histories and present-day realities of our healthcare landscape. Megan Peterson, Executive Director of Gender Justice, stressed that Minnesota does not have enough clinics and providers to meet out-of-state demand. Shayla Walker, Executive Director of Our Justice, issued a similar warning: “Just because other people have worse laws doesn’t mean our laws are good” (NPR, 2022). Simultaneously, there has also been a “rampant increase in violence and political targeting of the trans community,” including the horrific attack of a trans woman at a Minneapolis light rail station in early 2023 (Omar, 2023).

This is to say that Minnesota’s “safe haven” status may well remain an unfulfilled promise, one that potentially loses sight of the historical and ongoing struggle to expand and protect human rights to reproductive healthcare in the state. We were curious about how community members invested in reproductive and gender justice felt about these powerful safe haven rhetorics and the larger social and structural factors that might be driving their feelings.

By engaging in the practice of community storytelling, we hope to create an archive that can not only guide future writings about history from the ground up but also serve as a powerful repository for delivering on Minnesota’s “safe haven” promise and becoming a place of true gender and reproductive justice. We were also curious to explore the ways that oral history can be useful for those in the Reproductive Justice Space in the state and beyond, especially center the promotion of resources in the hopes of supporting the needs of organizations in the short term.

Adam Negri and Lauren Ruhrold led the first phase of the project. With the help of researchers Vanessa Aciro Apria and Katarina Malone, they conducted 10 interviews with activists and providers as they navigated the rapidly changing legal and care landscape. They also established long-term storage and preservation at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, thanks to the expert guidance of archivist Linnea Anderson.
Phase 1 interviews included (in order): Dr. Diane Horvath, Tammi Kromenaker, Stephani Tikalsky, Jacki Trelawny, Rev. Kelli Clement, Nadine Ashby, Ashley Kidd-Tatge, Juwaria Jama and Maddie Klun, Emi Gacaj. These interviews were made possible in part by the people of Minnesota through a grant funded by an appropriation to the Minnesota Historical Society from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Adam Negri, Lauren Ruhrold, and Emily Winderman lead the second phase of the project. It is also supported by Clare Frances Kennedy, Teresa Bergen, María José Castillo, and Jasmine Baxter as the project’s research associate, transcriber, graphic designer, and website developer. This phase of the project continues as the first, with an emphasis on gender-affirming care, storytelling, and reproductive justice.
This phase of the project is ongoing. Current interviews are made possible by generous funding from the University of Minnesota’s Human Right Initiative Research Fund and Institute for Advanced Study.

OUR TEAM

Adam is a historian of medicine and bioethicist at the University of Minnesota. He likes to think, write, and talk about how medicine shapes our lives and how we, in turn, shape medicine. Originally from Montana, he enjoys fishing, camping, and watching horror movies with his spouse and two cats (Root Beer and Lucy).
Lauren is a historian of medicine and technology, as well as an oral historian, based in Minneapolis. She is passionate about recovering hidden voices in healthcare. Lauren also enjoys living life with her husband and dog, roller skating, and painting rocks to leave here, there, and everywhere (@freelittlerocklibrary).
Dr. Emily Winderman is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who researches the history of criminalized abortion and contemporary cultures of reproductive healthcare access. She is passionate about dislodging the harmful and reductive public scripts that over-determine public perceptions about stigmatized healthcare–such as abortion and gender-affirming care. In her free time, she paddles Minnesota’s beautiful waterways.
Clare Frances Kennedy is a doctoral student in Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, where she studies reproductive healthcare access, specifically the role of travel in the post-Dobbs reproductive care landscape. Outside of the academic context, she enjoys cooking and spending time with her two cats.
Teresa Bergen’s oral history expertise includes transcribing, editing, indexing and interviewing. She’s the author of Transcribing Oral History, Easy Portland Outdoors, Sober Travel Handbook, and co-author of Historic Cemeteries of Portland, Oregon. She lives in Portland with her husband and her black cat.
Maria José has worked in the commercial field for publishing agencies, graphic design studios, cultural organizations, and artists such as: ARTBO, IDARTES, the Colombian Ministry of Culture, and projects awarded by AIGA. Their art has been showcased in galleries in Colombia and the United States. They have been the recipient of awards and scholarships by TEDx, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and ICETEX. Along with commercial work, María José cultivates an art practice that feeds off of their curiosity with language and communication. Their conceptual approach incorporates the analysis of cultural background related to the way we read the written word, not only as a functional element in a discourse, but also as an object existing in a spatial field. María José’s work is heavy on formal exploration of type and shapes, with a refreshing view on how type, layout and color affect the way a message is read. Always able to maintain a seasoned eye on contemporary graphic design, they also dive deep in a quirky and colorful universe with their illustration work, often accompanied by lettering exploration.
Linnea Anderson is the Archivist of the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries. She has an MA in History and Certificate in Archival Management from the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of History and Archival Management Program, as well as a BA in History and BA in Theatre from St Olaf College. Prior to working at the Social Welfare History Archives, Linnea was assistant archivist and then assistant director of the Columbia University Archives in New York. She helped to plan and establish the first formal archives since Columbia’s founding in 1754. She also served as a consultant to archives and historical societies for the New York State Documentary Heritage Program. Before becoming an archivist, Linnea was a museum educator at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, NY where she developed and presented programs in New York’s historic waterfront district and in New York Harbor on board the historic 1885 schooner, Pioneer.
Jasmine Baxter, M.A., brings a social justice lens to marketing, web design, and other communications in the nonprofit and higher education sectors. You can often find them snapping photos at events; creating designs for print, web, and social media; or relaxing at home with their cat, Kiki.

Special Thanks

Thank you to our collaborators, friends, and mentors: Vanessa Aciro Apira, David Beard, Emily Beck, Juliet Burba, Jennifer Gunn, Leah Harmann, Lois Hendrickson, Katarina Malone, Margaret Miles, Kevin Murphy, Jole Shackelford, Barb Sommers, Amy Sullivan, Mary Thomas, Dominique Tobbell, and Mark Usem.