Around 1968 | Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories

A failed political revolution that led to an enduring cultural revolution? An unrivalled democratic moment or a disastrous attack on ethical values in the name of drugs, free love and violence? The political and cultural challenges of the years around 1968 across Europe have been represented in sharply contrasting terms ever since.

This international project reconsiders 1968 as a historic moment in the shadow of the Second World War, Cold War and wars of decolonisation, and in the glare of the Swinging Sixties, when a generation of young activists believed that they could change the world and at the same time change themselves.

Relaunch of the database and website

This project ran from 2007 to 2011 and its main findings were published in Cultural and Social History 8/4 (2011) and in Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring (eds), Europe's 1968. Voices of Revolt (Oxford University Press, 2013)

The original database of interviews and website went down as a result of a server crash soon after its launch. This archive was painstakingly put back together in 2019.

Access to the database is at two levels. There are eighteen interviews, drawn from the French case, which the interviewees have kindly agreed to be made publicly available. The main body of the interviews were granted under the condition that they would be made available only to those undertaking academic research.

If you would like to access these interviews please email around1968@history.ox.ac.uk or email the SDS Team; sds@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Introduction to Around 1968

Robert Gildea

Please click on the link below if you would like to listen to Professor Robert Gildea's introductory talk.

Listen here!