Giovanni Costigan (1905–1990) was a noted historian and popular lecturer, and a specialist in Irish and English history. Costigan attended the University of Oxford, and University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he earned his PhD. Costigan taught at the University of Wisconsin and Idaho State University before joining the history department at the University of Washington in 1934. He retired from UW in 1975.

In the 1950s, Costigan defended colleagues subjected to anti-Communist investigations, and in the early 1960s he was the target of an unsuccessful campaign seeking his dismissal from the university. Costigan was also a staunch critic of American involvement in the Vietnam war. In 1971, he famously debated conservative William F. Buckley over the Vietnam War and American foreign policy to a sold-out crowd at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion on campus. He wrote biographies of Sigmund Freud and Sir Robert Wilson, a British general under Wellington, as well as a history of Ireland. In 1958, the B'nai B'rith in Seattle honored him as Man of the Year, and he received the first ever Distinguished Teaching Award given by the University of Washington in 1970.

Interview conducted by Donald A. Schmechel in 1985. This interview is part of the Donald Schmechel Oral History Collection. Don Schmechel, who was a member of the Seattle Public Library Foundation board, began this project with Seattle Public Library in 1984, with the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) brought on board as a partner in early 1985. Schmechel himself worked to raise the funding for the project, and volunteered his time to manage the project, and to conduct interviews along with a crew of volunteers. Originally titled the Videotaping Historic Figures (VHF) Program, the project interviewed 91 people, and MOHAI holds the interviews for 32 of these individuals.