Iowa Labor History Oral Project (ILHOP)

From 2013 to 2023, John served as oral historian at the University of Iowa Labor Center, where he managed the Iowa Labor History Oral Project (ILHOP).

With over 1,500 interviews with workers stretching over half a century, ILHOP is one of the largest and longest-running, labor-focused oral history projects in the US.

During his time at ILHOP, John was part of a team that led digitization of approximately 1,100 analog audio recordings and transcripts. He was also lead interviewer for a new round of born-digital collecting focused on the period since 1970. Themes for these new interviews included the rise of the public-sector, deindustrialization, the stories of recent immigrants and refugees, and new forms of organizing.

John wrote several grants to support this work, including a major award from the National Endowment for the Humanities that funded new transcription, indexing, and development of the project’s website, ILHOP: Iowa History As Told By the Workers Who Made It.

(“FE-UE 109 workers, Quad Cities,” the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City)