Oral Histories

We hold a growing collection of oral histories relating to hospitals and healthcare across Edinburgh and the Lothians which help to provide a personal context to existing paper and object collections held here at LHSA.

If you wish to explore our oral history collections, please contact us at lhsa@ed.ac.uk.

Please note that many of our oral histories have varying conditions on access set by participants, in addition to any data-protection-related access conditions assessed by LHSA.

You can find clips from a number of interviews on Media Hopper and within our Google Arts and Culture Exhibition - Memories from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Our Collections

Interviews with people familiar with the hospital when it was based at Lauriston Place. This includes staff, volunteers and patients.


Interviews with medical professionals who worked at the Western General Hospital, including doctors and nurses. We also hold an interview with Red Dot Radio, the on-site hospital radio station.


Interviews with people who volunteered for and used the service. 


Interviews with people involved in Edinburgh’s response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic, including policy makers, healthcare personnel, and charities.


Series of oral histories recorded as part of Waverley Care's Heritage Lottery-funded oral history project. 


Interviews recorded with individuals living with HIV, recorded by HIV Scotland and donated with interviewees’ consent.


A collection of interviews with former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh nurses as part of the Unsung Heroes project. Their stories were then used as inspiration for the creation of new artworks.


We hold two interviews with David Gow who is best known for inventing the Edinburgh Modular Arm System (EMAS) in 1998, the world’s first myoelectrically controlled arm with a powered shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers, and for inventing the i-limb, the first ever artificial hand with independently powered digits, in 2007.


This project collected oral history testimonies from mental health service users within the Lothian region.


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