On a night in 1983, the apartheid police came knocking on the door of a family home in the township of Soweto, located just outside Johannesburg. They were looking for ‘Vicky’ – a seventeen-year-old school student who, according to their…
Author: Dr. Kate Law
‘Almost an Equal Example’: Justice during the American Civil War by Elizabeth M. Barnes
On May 17th, 1864, Jennie Green and her friend, Nellie Wyatt, arrived with the 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry at City Point, Virginia. The two girls had recently escaped slavery in Sussex County, seizing the opportunity the war had presented to carve…
Their Doris/my Doris: Personal Connections While Exploring WW2 seafarers’ masculinity by Dr Jo Stanley
I especially like doing history when serendipity bring personal connections with the women whose pasts I’m looking at. Re-knowing these ‘names’ as emotional embodied subjects helps me better understand both them and me, but also women I know – in…
Online seminar series: Womandla! Feminism and Social Movements in the Global South
We are pleased to share the first installments of the schedule the schedule for the Womandla! Online Seminar Series, beginning with Panel 1 on Friday 9 April 2021. Keep up to date with the developing schedule here. Please note that…
Old Round Court and Gold Lace: Ann Renney’s Shop on the Strand by Dr Sarah Birt
What was the occupational structure of the Strand? How many businesses were run by women and what was the nature of their trade? Having studied women in business in seventeenth and eighteenth-century London before, my new project focuses on the…
Monsters, mothers and mistresses: The varying faces of women in Crusades literature by Dr Jennifer Markey
We who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was […] a Frank has […] been made into a Galilean […] Some have taken wives not only of their own people but Syrians or Armenians or even Saracens who…
‘Are you a witch or are you a fairy? Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?’ The Consequences of Belief and Superstition in Nineteenth Century Ireland by Melissa Kane.
In the mid-1890s, a small village in County Tipperary caught the attention of not only the Irish and English newspapers, but even The New York Times. Known as the ‘Tipperary Witchcraft’ case, English newspapers argued that, during a time when…
Sharing Stories of Women in War: Bettie’s Story by Judith Hewitt, Manager of The Devil’s Porridge Museum
“To be honest, it is one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever done” said 17 year old Josie of her experience meeting and interviewing 94 year old Bettie Baird. Bettie and Josie both come from Carlisle and the former…
The Hidden Heritage of a Naval Town: Women’s community activism in Portsmouth since 1960 by Dr Laurel Foster
The main aim of this project was to document the activism of women in the Portsmouth area by interviewing women from a range of backgrounds and with different interests in community issues. The project, initiated and co-lead by Dr Sue…