250 local voices ‘Bordering on Britishness’

The project ‘Bordering on Britishness: An Oral History of Gibraltar in the 20th Century’ now in its second and final year of active field work has reinforced the fact that there is “no typical” Gibraltarian. As the project has gathered momentum, interviewing 250 people since it first began, it has further established (as reported in this newspaper last October) that a typical Gibraltarian does not exist. With a major conference expected in 2017 alongside a number of publications, at its conclusion it will leave a legacy of documented material and recorded language generating an important database of Gibraltar’s contemporary history.

At a presentation on Thursday at the Garrison Library, to an invited audience, Dr Jennifer Ballantine Director of the Gibraltar Garrison Library and Professor Andrew Canessa from the University of Essex, spoke of how the project was looking at the oral history of Gibraltar in the latter part of the twentieth century to see how Gibraltarian identity has changed and developed over time.

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