The research for my book, Suffragettes of Kent, provided insight into many historic journeys of hope, determination and courage. In the course of my research I discovered many heart-warming stories, including the fruit farmers who provided a place to stay…
Between January and May 2020, I visited the City and County Archives in Cork, Ireland, and mined through the Irish Newspaper Archive, to research the Cork Child Welfare League for my PhD thesis on maternal and infant mortality in twentieth-century…
Wednesday, 13th January 2021 4:00pm (London) Three weeks after the suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920, the suffragist, labor lawyer, anti-war activist, and feminist journalist Crystal Eastman attended a meeting of the National Woman’s Party. Now…
Nellie Cressall was one of the brave women who went to prison in support of the Poplar Rates Rebellion in 1921, just one episode in a long life of activism, which began after she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP)…
In my book, Measuring Difference, numbering normal: setting the standards for disability in the interwar period, I show how specific conceptions of normalcy and disability emerged in the interwar period. The First World War necessitated new ways of thinking about…
The Autumn 2020 issue of Women’s History is available now for purchase. The digital version of this edition is available free to all members – see details below.
The Greek myths are among the world’s most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Stories of gods and monsters…
Our interest in widows was sparked when writing about the British women’s suffrage movement; we noticed all three leaders of the major suffrage organisations were widows. Was this, we wondered, something of a coincidence, or a more complex and common…
The grand narrative of the Second World War as the ‘People’s War’ remains a dominant theme in British cultural memory. Within that narrative, warfare and traditional ideas about masculinity are inextricably linked. Courage, valour and aggression are all worlds associated…