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.
Katie Barclay is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick, working on a project 'Marriage in Ireland, 1660-1925' with Prof Maria Luddy at Warwick and Prof Mary O'Dowd, and Dr John Bergin, at the University of Queen's, Belfast. The project looks at the lower and middling sorts and explores all aspects of marital relationship from the legal framework to how couples negotiated married life. Katie's particular interest lies in power-relationships within marriage and family more broadly, looking at how couples negotiated power within a patriarchal context and how the emotive and intimate nature of family relates to hierarchical gender relations. She has a broader interest in gender and women's history, family history, creating self and identity and feminism. Katie is currently at the finishing stages of writing her book, Love, Intimacy and Power: Marital Relationships in Scotland, 1650-1850, based on her PhD, which used the correspondence of the Scottish elite to look at power within marriage. Katie was involved in organising the 2008 WHN conference at Glasgow, and editing the special edition of Women's History Review on 'Gender, Generations, and Lifecycle' that arose from the event. She has also volunteered to help at next year’s event at Warwick. She is also Treasurer/ Secretary of the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, who run the journal Scottish Historical Studies, as well as an annual conference and workshop.
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.
Sue Hawkins gained her PhD in Nursing History in 2007, as a mature student at Kingston University. She is currently working on two research projects at the University, one on Victorian hospitals, the other an oral history project for the Natural History Museum. She is one of three editors for the Women's History Magazine and sits on the steering committee for the UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery. Sue's original background is in science, having a BSc in Pharmacology, and after a career in scientific and business publishing, went on to gain an MSc from University of London in History of Science Technology and Medicine. She retains an active interest in the history of medicine, but her main personal research is now focussed on nursing in the Victorian period. She is also interested in the development of historical research methods and investigating how new technologies can be harnessed to open up novel approaches to historical research. Sue has one article in press with Women’s History Review and is currently working on a book, 'Nursing and Women's Labour: a quest for independence' due to be published in 2010.
Kath Holden gained her PhD as a mature student at the University of Essex in 1996 and now works at the University of the West of England as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities. She is a founder member and treasurer of the West of England and South Wales regional branch and represented the region on the National WHN steering committee from 1997-2001. In 2000 she organised the annual conference in Bath on 'Heartlands and Peripheries in Women's History' with June Hannam. Her main research is in family and gender history with a particular interest in marital status and the lives of single men and women in the twentieth century. Key publications in this area are: The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy 1830-1960, co-authored with Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle and Janet Fink, (Longman: 1999), 'Imaginary widows: spinsters, marriage and the 'lost generation' in Britain after the Great War', Journal of Family History, 30, 4 (2005); and The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England 1914-1960, Manchester University Press, 2007. She has also co-edited two special issues of Women’s History Review in 2002 and 2008. Kath is a trustee of the network and convenor of the steering committee.
Ann Kettle (Treasurer and Membership Secretary of Women's History Scotland) has recently retired from the University of St Andrews where she is an honorary senior lecturer in mediaeval history. She was one of the first to introduce a course on the history of women in a Scottish university and for 25 years taught an honours module on 'Women in Mediaeval England'. Her main research interests lie in English social and economic history and she has published several articles on female domestic servants and prostitution in later medieval England. Various other activities have given her a research interest in the careers of modern female academics and earned her an OBE for services to higher education.
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.
Helen Meller is Professor Emeritus of History from the University of Nottingham. She was one of the members of the founding committee of WHN, responsible for developing the WHN constitution, and served as Treasurer from 1991 – 5. In 1993, she coordinated a group of scholars: Jane Rendall, Penny Summerfield, June Hannam and Kath Holden in a project for the government funded Teaching Learning Technology Programme on Themes in Women’s History. Her main research interests have been in urban history and planning where, as Director of the Centre for Urban Culture at Nottingham, she has also introduced women’s history themes. The proceeds of a workshop on women and built space has since appeared as Women and the Making of Built Space in England 1870-1950 edited by Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007). Her most recent monograph on urban planning is European Cities 1890-1930s: history, culture and the built environment (Chichester and New York, John Wiley and sons, 2001). She is currently editor of Planning Perspectives: an international journal of history, planning and the environment, and on the Council of the International Planning History Society.
Sue Morgan gained her PhD as a mature student at the University of Bristol in 1997. She was Head of Cultural Studies for six years at the University of Chichester overseeing five departments but returned to a research-focused role as Reader in Women’s and Gender History in 2007. Her main research interests are in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century religion and gender and feminist historiography. Sue has published widely in the fields of gender history and religious history. Her main publications include the edited collections Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture (Palgrave, 2000) and Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain, 1750-1900 (Palgrave, 2002), The Feminist History Reader (Routledge, 2006) and Manifestos for History (Routledge, 2007) co-edited with Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow. She is currently completing Women, Gender and Religious Cultures, Britain, 1800-1940 (Routledge, 2010) co-edited with Jacqui deVries. Sue is an editorial board member for the journals Rethinking History and Gender and History. She is a trustee of the network and manages the gift aid and Charity Commission liaison
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.
Jane Potter is Senior Lecturer in Publishing at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University, where she teaches modules on book history and the culture of publishing. Her main research is on women's writing of the Great War. Her book Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918 (2005) is published by Oxford University Press and she has contributed ‘Valiant Heroines or Pacific Ladies? Women in War & Peace’ to the Routledge History of European Women Since 1700. Her other publications include ‘For Country, Conscience & Commerce: Publishers and Publishing 1914-1918’ in Publishing and the First World War: Essays in Book History, and articles for the History of the Book in Scotland (volume 4), the Women at War Encyclopedia, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. She is one of the three Editors of Women's History Magazine and is also Book Reviews Editor.
June Purvis is Professor of Women's and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth and is Founding and Managing Editor of the Women's History Series with Routledge. She has published extensively on women's history with particular interests in women's education and female suffrage and her most recent publication is Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (Routledge, 2002). She has bee co-opted to the committee as our representative on the committee of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History.
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!