Harvard referencing
How to cite a interview in Harvard referencing
Interviews you conducted yourself are usually personal communication — cited in the text but absent from the reference list — while published interviews are cited like any other recorded source.
THE FORMAT
A interview in Harvard, at a glance
Interviewee, A. (Year) Interviewed by B. Interviewer, Publication or program, Day Month. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Adeyemi, F. (2023) Interviewed by Marta Ruiz, The Calder Review, 8 February. Available at: https://www.calderreview.com/adeyemi-interview (Accessed: 3 March 2024).
(Adeyemi, 2023)
In prose: Adeyemi (2023) describes the switch to rammed earth as an economic decision first.
Adeyemi, F. (2024) Interviewed by the author, 3 March.
In text: (F. Adeyemi, interviewed by the author, 3 March 2024) — many guides keep this in the text only and leave it out of the reference list entirely.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the reference list builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Harvard needs from a interview
Elements to collect
- Name of the person interviewed
- Name of the interviewer, for a published interview
- Full date of the interview
- Where it was published or broadcast, when it was
- Format — transcript, audio recording, personal communication
Rules specific to this entry
- The person interviewed is the author, not the interviewer. This holds even when the interviewer is the better-known name and the piece is published under theirs.
- An interview you conducted yourself is treated as personal communication in most Harvard guides: cited in the text, absent from the reference list. Some guides do want it listed, and some want a separate appendix of interviews, so this is one to confirm rather than assume.
- Where participants were anonymized, use a consistent participant code — (Participant 7, 2024) — and explain the scheme once in your methods section.
- A broadcast interview usually needs the program name and the channel, which sit where the publication name sits above.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Harvard needs for a interview: Name of the person interviewed; Name of the interviewer, for a published interview; Full date of the interview; Where it was published or broadcast, when it was.
Build the reference list entry
Arrange those details in the Harvard order: Interviewee, A. (Year) Interviewed by B. Interviewer, Publication or program, Day Month. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Adeyemi, 2023) — or work the same reference into your sentence as Adeyemi (2023) describes the switch to rammed earth as an economic decision first..
Check it against the exceptions
The person interviewed is the author, not the interviewer. This holds even when the interviewer is the better-known name and the piece is published under theirs.
Harvard RULES
The conventions behind every Harvard entry
your institution’s Harvard style guide — Harvard has no single governing manual is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the reference list is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the reference list is sorted, and where Harvard entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Harvard referencing guide.
The same interview in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Harvard and interviews
What if the interview has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a interview?
Name of the person interviewed, Name of the interviewer, for a published interview, Full date of the interview, and the rest of the elements listed above. Interviews you conducted yourself are usually personal communication — cited in the text but absent from the reference list — while published interviews are cited like any other recorded source.
Is there anything unusual about a interview in Harvard?
The person interviewed is the author, not the interviewer. This holds even when the interviewer is the better-known name and the piece is published under theirs.
What else catches people out here?
An interview you conducted yourself is treated as personal communication in most Harvard guides: cited in the text, absent from the reference list. Some guides do want it listed, and some want a separate appendix of interviews, so this is one to confirm rather than assume.
Can I reformat this interview in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
