Steering Committee Biographies

Henrice Altink gained her Ph.D at the University of Hull. She is a lecturer in modern history at the University of York, where she teaches courses on Caribbean and American history. She was previously a lecturer in American history at the University of Glamorgan, where she was a committee member of the West of England and South Wales regional branch of the WHN. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, class and gender in Jamaica during slavery and freedom. She has published books on Representations of Slavery women in Discourses on slavery and abolition, 1780-1838 (Routledge, 2007) and Destined for a Life of Service: Constructing African Jamaican Womanhood, 1865-1938 (MUP, forthcoming). She is the co-editor of Gendering Border Studies (University of Wales Press, forthcoming) and an associate-editor for Wadabagei, a journal of the Caribbean and its diasporas.

She brings to the committee extensive experience of organising and hosting seminars and conferences for the West of England and South Wales branch of the WHN and for the Society of Caribbean Studies, of which she has been committee member since 2003. In addition, she extends the committee’s geographical focus as she works on the British Caribbean but teaches largely North America history. And finally, the committee benefits from her contacts with women’s historians/feminist scholars in the Americas, gained as a result of research trips to the Caribbean and more recently, a fellowship at the Five College Women’s Studies and Research Center at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.   

Jane Berney studied history at Manchester University, graduating in 1984. She then qualified as a chartered accountant, working for one of the big four accountancy firms as an auditor in the Banking Sector, mainly in London but also 3 years in the Netherlands and 2 years in Cambridge. While living in Hong Kong she completed an MA in Public and Comparative History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2005/6) which led to her starting a PhD at the University of Hong Kong (2007/8). This was interrupted when her family were moved back to the UK in 2008. In 2009 she restarted her PhD on a full time basis at the Open University and expects to complete it by October 2011. Her main interest has always been in social history and in particular how certain groups within society negotiate with authority. Her current research is on the implementation and working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances (CDOs) in nineteenth century Hong Kong.

Barbara Bush is an Emeritus Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University and is a member of the editorial board of Women's History Review. She has lived in Canada and the Caribbean and published widely in the area of Caribbean slavery and more recently, race, gender and empire. Key publications include Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838 (Oxford, 1990), ‘Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century’ in ed. Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire, (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Imperialism and Postcolonialism (London, 2006). She has also had considerable experience as academic consultant for documentaries on race and slavery for Channel 4, BBC2 and Radio 4.

Amanda Capern is a Lecturer in Early-Modern Women's History at Hull, University. In addition to undergraduate teaching, she coordinates the MA in Women’s History and contributes to the MA in Women, Gender and Literature and the European collaborative MA in Women’s and Gender Studies. She is the author of The Historical Study of Women: England, 1500-1700 (Palgrave, 2008), and is currently working on a second book – Women, Land and Family in Early Modern England. Other recent publications include Women, Wealth and Power (2007), edited with Dr Judith Spicksley, which was a special issue of the Women’s History Review arising out of the Women’s History Network conference of 2004; several contributions to Companion to Women’s Historical Writing (Palgrave, 2005); ‘In Search of the Golden Chersonese’, HerStoria, 2 (2009); and ‘New Perspectives on the English Reformation’, Journal of Religious History, 33:2 (2009). She is the series editor of Gender and History and is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Gender Studies.

Tanya Cheadle is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Glasgow on her thesis entitled A Very Scottish Sexual Anarchy: Sexuality and Gender in Fin de Siècle Urban Scotland. This entails an exploration of the lives and cultural productions of a loose network of men and women living in Edinburgh and Glasgow between 1880 and 1900, who were intent on challenging contemporary sexual and gender norms during the unsettled transitional period between Victorianism and Modernism, at a locale removed from the perceived cultural epicenter of London. Prior to this, Tanya was a television director, working first for the BBC in London, before moving to Scotland as the filmmaker on Castaway 2000, living on the island of Taransay for a year. She subsequently settled in Scotland, making history documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, including several films for a series called 'Days That Shook the World', which used dramatic reconstruction to retell key events in history. She therefore brings to the committee knowledge of working within the media, as well as experience of organizing national and international events to tight deadlines. She returned to academia as a mature student in 2006, focusing on women's and gender history during her masters and writing her dissertation on a scandal at a Glasgow music hall in 1875.

Krista Cowman is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln and has been a member of the WHN since its formation.  Her main research interests are in the history of women in British political movements, particularly suffrage and first-wave feminism.  She is currently completing a book on women in British politics and co-ordinating a European Science Foundation Workshop exploring how later feminist movements throughout Europe used the history of first-wave feminism.

Gráinne Goodwin gained her PhD at the University of York in 2009 and has recently taken up the post of lecturer in European History at Leeds Metropolitan University. She has a keen interest in women’s history fostered by a MA in Women’s and Gender History and by her doctoral studies into the life and works of the memsahib and author Flora Annie Steel. These studies reflect her ongoing research interests in the interplay between race, empire and gender and, in particular, colonial constructions of femininity. She has contributed an essay on fictional depictions of rural life in colonial India to a forthcoming collection on representations of the Punjab, and is currently working on articles on British women’s activities during the Raj and fin-de-siècle literary history. She has experience of organising seminars and social events as social secretary to the University of Edinburgh History Society and as seminar convenor in 2007 for the Graduate Modern History Society at York. With an academic background in English and History and experience of teaching across a range of degrees in Leeds Metropolitan’s School of Cultural Studies, she also brings a strong interdisciplinary dimension to the pursuit of women’s history.

June Hannam is professor of modern history at the University of the West of England. She was a member of the Steering Group of WHN in the 1990s, when she held the post of treasurer, and is at present the chair of the West of England and South Wales WHN. She is on the editorial Board of Women’s History Review and Labour History Review. Her publications have explored the relationship between feminist and socialist politics from the 1880s to the inter-war period and include, Isabella Ford, 1855-1924 (1989); (with Karen Hunt), Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s-1920s (2002) and Feminism (2007). Her current research interests are Labour Party women MPs in the inter-war years and gender politics in Bristol in the 20th century.  

Anne Logan is a historian specialising in nineteenth and 20th century British social history and women’s history.  She completed her PhD thesis entitled ‘Making Women Magistrates: Feminism, Citizenship & Justice in England & Wales 1920-1950’ in 2002.  Her first book, Feminism and Criminal Justice: A Historical Perspective, an examination of the involvement of women in penal reform pressure groups and the relationships between these and the feminist movement in the 1920-1970 period was published by Palgrave in 2008. Her next research project is on the penal reformer, S. Margery Fry (1874-1958).  Since 2001 she has been employed as a lecturer at the University of Kent in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research where she teaches history modules on the BSc Social Sciences, BA Criminal Justice Studies and the MA Criminology.  In addition to WHN, she is a member of the Social History Society and the British Society of Criminology. She can contribute to the WHN steering committee some practical experience of inter-disciplinary working at a time when communication between historians and other (related) disciplines is becoming more crucial.  She is also strongly in favour of academic historians communicating with a wider public, for example local and family historians, and has given talks to local societies about another of my research interests: the women’s suffrage movement in West Kent.

Kate Murphy has been a member of WHN since its inception.  She recently left the BBC, after 24 years, where she spent most of her career as a producer on Radio Four's Woman's Hour.  She joined the programme in 1993, becoming Senior Producer in 1998.  During this time, she produced hundreds of interviews and discussions on women's history, in all its forms and covering most periods.  This included many special editions such as the programme that launched the Women's Library in January 2002, a live panel discussion on suffragettes/suffragists.  In 2011 she gained her PhD at Goldsmith:  "On an Equal Footing with Men?" Women and Work at the BBC, 1923-1939, was supervised by Professor Sally Alexander.  Kate has written widely on women's history, for example, she wrote the Women's History Time-Line, part of the Woman's Hour web-page, and in 1990, Woman's Press/ Livewire published Firsts: British Women Achievers (republished 2001).

Juliette Pattinson is a social and cultural historian of Twentieth Century Britain and Europe, with particular interests in gender, personal testimonies and war. She is a Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Strathclyde, the Deputy Director of the Scottish Oral History Centre, the Secretary of the Social History Society, serves on the Peer Review College for the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is on the Steering Committee for Women's History Scotland. Her monograph, entitled Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, was published by MUP in 2007. She is currently working on two projects: the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and with Prof. Arthur McIvor on men in the reserved occupations in World War Two Britain.

Linsey Robb is a third year PhD student at the University of Strathclyde in receipt of an institutional Andersonian Scholarship. Her thesis focuses on cultural representations, of gender and gender relations in the workplace during the Second World War. Linsey is currently co-convenor of the Scottish Oral History Centre’s seminar series as well as co-founder and co-convenor of the ‘From the Sources to the Discourses’ postgraduate seminar series, run jointly between the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian University, which has been funded by the Modern British History Network, the Economic History Society and the Wellcome funded Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. In addition, she is a current member of the Scotland-wide postgraduate group ‘Historical Perspectives’. A member since 2008, she was secretary in the academic year 2009-2010 and chairperson in the academic years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. The group not only organises a ‘Work in Progress’ seminar series but also an annual conference, both of which attract speakers from all over Britain and beyond.

Flora Wilson has joined the Steering committee as our Schools Liaison Officer. Flora has been teaching History in and around London comprehensives for five years. Before that, she did a stint at the Institute of Education Students’ Union, as President with responsibility for Academic Affairs. Her PGCE was at the IoE, after her first degree at Cambridge, mostly in medieval History. She is proud to have studied at Newnham. Unfortunately, she is less proud of her record at integrating women’s history into the curricula of the schools in which she has taught – which is why she is thrilled to be involved now in the WHN, and hopes to be able to change both her record, and that of many schools around the country. Watch this space!