Toby Butler is a history lecturer at the University of East London and Birkbeck, University of London.

His research interests include oral history, digital heritage, historical interpretation in museums and the social and the cultural history of London. Toby has created several websites that use oral history recordings to explore place, and they include several freely downloadable audio walks of various places in London (www.memoryscape.or.uk). Toby is also the project director for the 'Ports of Call' project, which has been working with community groups and artists around the docks of East London to map and historically interpret the area in various ways (www.portsofcall.org.uk ). Toby has directed and worked on oral history projects in India, the USA, Wales and England. He has published work on history and heritage in various edited books and has published journal articles in Cultural Geographies, Museum Practice, Geography Compass, Museums Journal, Social and Cultural Geography and Rising East. Before working in academia Toby was the editor of Third Sector and Fostercare Magazine and has published articles in several national magazines and newspapers including the Independent, The Guardian and the New Statesman. He has also authored several oral history CD collections, published by Elmbridge Borough Council and the Museum of London.

• History

• Patterns of Imperial History
• Britain in the Long 19th Century
• London, History and Heritage
• Researching British Social History, 1918-1951
• Memory and History
• Doing Public History: Place, Memory and Heritage
• Research Methods and Dissertation

Toby is currently working on a chapter of a book entitled Place, Writing, and Voice in Oral History (Palgrave , a trail of Victoria Park in East London for Tower Hamlets Council and as a community historian with the Hackney Society documenting the history of healthcare in Hackney: http://www.hackneysociety.org/health/

• ‘Memoryscape : integrating oral history, memory and landscape on the river Thames’. In Paul Ashton and Hilda Kean (Eds): People and their Pasts: Public History Today, Palgrave Macmillan 223-239 (2009)
• Liquid History: the Elmbridge Riverside audio trail. CD recording, Elmbridge Borough Council (2008)
• ‘Teaching and learning guide for Memoryscape: How audio walks can deepen our sense of place by integrating art, oral history and cultural geography’. Geography Compass 2 (5): 1750–1754 (2008)
• Ports of Call: Walks of Art at the Royal Docks. Triple CD recording, University of East London (2008)
• ‘Memory lane: how to produce trails for mp3 players that give listeners an evocative experience of place’, Museum Practice 40: 42-45 (2007)
• ‘Memoryscape: How audio walks can deepen our sense of place by integrating art, oral history and cultural geography', Geography Compass 1 (3): 350–372 (2007)
• ‘Doing heritage differently’, Rising East Online 5, (2006)
• ‘A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk as practice in cultural geography', Social and Cultural Geography 7(6): 889-908 (2006)
• ‘Linked: a landmark in sound, a public walk of art’. In Robert Perks and Alistair Thompson (Eds) The Oral history Reader (2nd Edition) London, Routledge 425-433 (2006).
• ‘Drifting and Dockers – voices from the hidden history of the Thames’ Double CD recording, Museum of London. (2005)
• ‘Linked: a landmark in sound, a public walk of art’. Cultural Geographies 12(1): 77-88 (2005)
• Websites
  • ‘Liquid History – the Elmbridge riverside trail’ Elmbridge Borough Council (2008)
  • ‘Ports of Call: Walks of Art at the Royal Docks’. University of East London (2008)
  • Drifting and Dockers – voices from the hidden history of the Thames’ Website, Museum of London (2005).

Toby is co-editor of the History Workshop Journal, on the management team of the Raphael Samuel History Centre, an Associate of the Museums Association and a member of the Institute for Historical Research, the Oral History Society and the Social History Curators Group.

Recent public lectures and seminars

• ‘Ports of Call: interpreting heritage at the Royal Docks in London’ EFAITH conference, Calais, France (November 2009)
• ‘I Spy Montreal’ Concordia University, Montreal, Canada; Public lecture series and workshop for invited guests (November 2009)
• ‘Healthcare in Hackney’ Hackney Museum Public Lecture series, with Ken Worpole (June 2009)
• ‘Memoryscape: experiments in locative media on the Thames’: invited by English Heritage to give paper to the Institute for Archaeologists (April 2009)
• ‘The future of Public History’: ‘conversations and disputations’ seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (paper and debate with Patrick Wright, Hilda Kean and John Siblon) (March 2009)
• ‘Community mapping and heritage trails’: Newington Green - Now and Then project (February 2009)
• ‘Drifting: experiments in oral history practice on the River Thames’, Public History Group, Ruskin College, Oxford (January 2009)
• Guest speaker for Spaces of Sound: Music-Geography Research Seminars, University of Nottingham ‘Memoryscape: how located new media can deepen our sense of place’ (Nov 2008)
• Royston Pike Public Lecture Series, Elmbridge Borough Council (Walton on Thames). ‘A Local Memoryscape’ (Sept 2008)
• Invited to design and lead half day field workshop at the newly opened Heathrow Terminal 5 entitled ‘Layerings and Memories’ as part of the AHRC Landscape and Environment programme ‘On the Go: Mobilities, Settlement and Performance’ (April 2008)

• www.memoryscape.org.uk
• www.portsofcall.org.uk
• www.raphael-samuel.org.uk