In the 1920s and 1930s many African American expatriates settled in Europe including Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall and Elisabeth Welch. They captivated audiences with their songs, beauty, elegance and style. Evelyn stood alone as a black Briton who joined these…
Wednesday October 21 4.00pm (London) Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, Intimacy, and the Making of Race in Argentina This presentation is a gendered analysis of black invisibility in Argentina. It focuses on Black and African descended women who actively…
When Margery Dod brought a plea of trespass to Nottingham’s borough court in April 1324, she listed a string of accusations against many members of the de Spondon family, likely to have been her neighbours, trading contacts, or both. Margery…
At the height of the London Blitz in 1941, Esther Bruce, who was then a young woman aged 28, became part of my family. Her Guyanese father had just died, so their neighbour, 63-year-old Granny Johnson (my great-grandmother), ‘adopted’ her.…
With only a few exceptions, such as the Crimean war ‘doctress’ Mary Seacole, black and dual-heritage women have been ‘written out’ of British history. This is true of the many books published about Britain and the First World War and…
In the late 1970s Jackie Fulton visited social services to ask how she could find childcare for her children so she could go back to work. This was apparently an unusual request. She remembers being met with incredulity and told…
7 October 4pm (London) Women Beneath the Surface: Coal and the Colonial State in India, 1920s-1940s Urvi Khaitan, Doctoral Student, University of Oxford This paper studies the tens of thousands of low-caste and adivasi (indigenous) women who worked in coal…
What’s an extrinsic joy if you’re a historian? For me it’s the simple-but-wonderful pleasure of continually finding both heroines and beloved new friends among the people whose histories I explore. They may be living, and so we can physically meet…
With regret WHN West Midlands Region annual Women’s History Conference at the University of Worcester in conjunction with the British Society of Sports History scheduled for November 7 2020 has been postponed until November 2021. (Exact date TBC) Confirmed papers…