Over the past few months, we have all had to adjust to a life lived online. For those of us who have been using archives for research we have also had to come to terms with exclusively using digitised material…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Dr Erika Edwards, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, Intimacy, and the Making of Race in Argentina’.
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…
Medieval Women and Urban Justice: Commerce, Crime and Community in England c.1300-1500 by Dr Teresa Phipps
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…
Black Women in Wartime Britain 1939-45 by Stephen Bourne
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.…
Black Women in Britain During the Great War By Stephen Bourne
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…
Doing it Ourselves by Rosa Schling
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…
I love you, my subject by Dr Jo Stanley
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…
Online Writing Retreats
To help support Women’s History Network members, the WHN will be using zoom to run a series of online, structured writing retreats. The aim of structured writing retreats is to provide dedicated time in which to progress writing projects. The…
Caroline Ganley and the School Care Committee: school meals and active citizenship before the Vote by Yvette Williams Elliott
The closure of schools to most pupils due to Covid-19 this year has once again highlighted the issue of food poverty, and raised fears for vulnerable children missing out on vital lunches and all the other social welfare provision provided…