Whilst preparing social media content for LGBTQ+ history month I came across the Welsh County LGBTQ+ timelines. Scanning the Newport timeline, one individual caught my eye – Amelia Vella. The timeline wrote how Amelia’s mother, Fanny Vella, was in the…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Boudoir Laments: Reading Gender and Spatiality in the Lyrics of Seventeenth-Century Chinese Gentlewomen – Yuemin He
Late Imperial China is often described as a society structured by strict gender hierarchies. Elite women were expected to remain within the domestic inner quarters, devoted to family duty, moral virtue, and household management, while public life and most forms…
Winner of the 2025 MA Dissertation Prize
We are very pleased to announce Sophie Weinberg’s ‘The Matrilineal Printing House: Recovering the Printing Lineage of Widow Stationers in the Seventeenth-Century English Book Trade’ the winner of our 2025 MA dissertation prize. Sophie examined two examples of intergenerational female inheritance of print shops: the…
The Prejudice of Welfare for Women Under the Poor Laws – Shagnick Bhattacharya
In April 1818, Catherine Macknally, described in the parish records of St Andrew, Plymouth, as a ‘common prostitute’, was apprehended while wandering and begging with her two illegitimate children—both under two years of age.[1] Examined before two justices of the…
Women’s History Network/Women’s History Association of Ireland Joint Book Prize
We are delighted to announce that the WHN has teamed up with the Women’s History Association of Ireland to offer a joint annual book prize which awards £500 for an author’s first single-authored monograph in women’s or gender history. Entries…
‘The Finding Katherine Project’: a window into the life of Scottish suffragist, Katherine Walker Lindsay – Katherine Ingram
I first learned of Katherine Walker Lindsay in early 2025 when I was examining the letter books of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Society for Women’s Suffrage (GWSSWS), a branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS),…
Women’s History Network Book Prize for 2023 and 2024
We are delighted to announce the winner of the WHN Book Prize for 2023 and 2024 (the two years were amalgamated). The judges chose Charmian Mansell’s book Female Servants in Early Modern England published by Liverpool University Press which wins the…
Scientific Aspirations and Normative Gender Roles: Indian Women in Science – Nilakshi Das
Women’s participation in Indian science since the mid-twentieth century is often framed through celebratory narratives of progress, characterised by increased educational access, rising numbers of women pursuing STEM degrees and gradual inclusion in scientific institutions. Such unequivocal narratives of success,…
Spring Seminar Series 2026 Programme
Dear friends, We are thrilled to share the programme for our Spring Seminar Series 2026. We are really excited about this one and hope you are looking forward to hearing from the fantastic speakers we have lined up. The sign-up…





