The Carolina junior used skills from the Southern Oral History Program’s internship course and other UNC-Chapel Hill classes to record original primary sources.
During her first year at Carolina, Uredo Agada began planning a research idea so expansive, she knew she would need to step outside the classroom — and the country — to devote time to its pursuit.
Between her sophomore and junior years at Carolina, Agada took a year-long break in studies to conduct original research on the Nigerian Civil War through first-person accounts.
Agada, a junior studying history and information science, was born in Kingston upon Hull, England, and grew up in Nigeria before moving to the U.S. as a child in 2008. When she returned to Abuja, Nigeria, to visit family during her first year at Carolina, Agada realized there were parts of her home country’s history she knew little about and wanted to explore.
With the encouragement of her sister, Iko, Agada read There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe, a personal account of the Nigerian Civil War, and wondered what other personal accounts were yet to be told and if, through oral histories, she might be able to tell them.
“I think it’s always important to contribute to shared knowledge and shared understanding of historical events, especially one so significant and, in a lot of ways, quite recent in Nigeria’s history,” the Morehead-Cain Scholar said. “That’s the seed that was planted.”
Research planning
In fall 2022, her sophomore year, Agada enrolled in “History 593: Undergraduate Oral History Internship and Seminar.” Part of the Southern Oral History Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, the class introduces students to the theory, methodology and ethics of oral histories.
Then, students create their own oral histories, including those in “Veterans’ Voices,” first-person accounts of veterans’ military experiences, and “The Story of Us,” a collection of experiences of LGBTQ+ Tar Heels.
History Ph.D. candidate Hooper Schultz, who taught Agada’s internship seminar, said the class teaches the fundamentals of creating oral histories — including how to set up a microphone and transcribe a conversation — while building students’ confidence and communication skills.
“A lot of the work that we do with students is something that they can take anywhere,” said Schultz, who emphasized the importance of learning how to interact with others to tell their stories with a balance of authority and respect.
Time away
After the class ended, Schultz became one of Agada’s mentors. He introduced her to Carolina history professor Lisa Lindsay, an expert in West African history who became Agada’s research adviser. Schultz also encouraged Agada to apply for the Southern Oral History Program’s Undergraduate Research Planning Grant.
With the grant and funding through Morehead-Cain’s Summer Enrichment Program, Agada was able to build preliminary research into an already busy summer that included an internship on the set of a forthcoming Disney+ series in Manchester, England, with UNC-Chapel Hill and Morehead-Cain alumnus and film producer James Dean ’89.
“The UK and Nigeria have a very long and linked history, so I thought, ‘While I’m here, let me see what documents about the war I can find,’” said Agada. She found resources at The National Archives and the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies that helped her develop interview questions for experts, draft an interview guide, dial in her project’s scope and build her knowledge about the war.
“Being a historian, you have to do a lot of research, because you’ve got to know everything that happened leading up to the thing that you want to talk about,” said Schultz. “But being an oral historian, that becomes even more important. You’re taking two or three hours of a person’s time. You don’t want to be in a situation where they’re talking about something that’s central to the historic event you’re interested in, and you don’t really know what they’re talking about.”
Agada remained mindful of this through her research in Chapel Hill, London and, finally, in Nigeria.
She arrived in Nigeria in October 2023 after securing interviews with some of Nigeria’s distinguished military leaders and major actors in the civil war, including Gen. Yakubu Dan-Yumma Gowon, former head of state, and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, former head of state and former president.
Agada’s father, a physician, spent over 20 years in the Nigerian military, and was the starting point for many of the interview connections. Her mother was instrumental in helping Agada navigate planning and traveling logistics, she said.
“It was really beautiful and gratifying how much support people poured out,” Agada said. Her family and Carolina mentors helped, of course, but she also received support from people who she had never met and who still believed in her mission of creating a more robust understanding of the past.
“One of my dad’s colleagues personally went to three generals’ houses with my introduction letter,” she continued. “Without that, I would very likely not have been able to interview these people. At every turn, I was met with such grace, kindness and generosity from so many people, which I’m so grateful for.”
Sharing her country’s history
In addition to visiting the Nigerian Army Museum in Abuja and the National War Museum in Umuahia, Agada interviewed eight people from both sides of the war — many with military experience — to create the oral histories. She was struck by the vulnerability and authenticity of the conversations and the power of storytelling as a form of information sharing.
In particular, she remembers interviewing one soldier whose experiences still affected him deeply.
“There were points where he would start to answer a question, and he just couldn’t,” she said. “These experiences are real. These people — this happened to them. And them sharing it with me is an honor.”
Agada began planning the histories’ archival life at the start of her project. She hopes they might be housed in a Nigerian archive that is open to the public.
“My goal is to illuminate and preserve these stories in a way that would be accessible to as many people as possible and to contribute to our understanding of that conflict and the people who lived through it,” she said.
Now a junior, Agada said adjusting to life back in Chapel Hill after her year away, which also included a French language immersion program in Lyon, France, and travel with fellow Tar Heels, was “a big change.” But she has embraced it.
“I think I’ve come away from the year with a lot of confidence,” she said. “I feel capable. I had an idea, a dream, and I saw it through. That’s something that I’ll carry with me.”
By Jess Abel, College of Arts and Sciences