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Research cluster in gender history: who are we?

Welcome to the University of Reading’s research cluster in gender history. Our purpose is to explore gender in its complexity. Across time and space gender has often been viewed and imagined as binary and cisgender. However, the construct of heteronormativity – the belief that people fall into two distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life – must be questioned, examined, and investigated. Our work uses a range of approaches, such as political, cultural, and social history, all thoroughly anchored within gender history but with cross- and interdisciplinary perspectives. We understand gender history to include:

  • women history
  • the history of manliness and masculinity
  • the history of sexuality
  • gendered history.

About our banner image: This rock art was created at least 6,000, possibly 10,000, years ago in a cave in the Sahara Desert. At a time when the Sahara was green, wet, and featured lakes, our ancestors chose to draw swimmers, bodies unsexed, and no gender division of labour visible.

Photograph of diverse group of peopleMothering SlavesNancy Astor

Research highlights

Belonging in Africa – Gendering anti-colonial nationalism, conflict, and white privilege

Heike I. Schmidt is a historian of gendered lived experiences in Africa. Her current projects are an African gender history of empire and of white privilege, and she also continues her work on the manliness of anti-colonial nationalism in Zimbabwe. A solid and mutually supportive group of doctoral students have made African gender history well established at the department and beyond: Shepherd Mutswiri examines the role of African women and the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe’s decolonisation, Francesca Baldwin (AHRC SWW DTP funded) studies female fighters in the ongoing as well as the earlier late twentieth century war in Tigray, while Shingirai Hopkins researches female veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war and land reform.

Gender and slavery

The Gender History Research Cluster has relative strength in the history of slavery and gender. Emily West explores the lives of enslaved women in the pre-Civil War USA, focussing especially on women’s everyday lives and experiences, including their lives as mothers. She has been joined by Professor Maria Helena Machado (University of São Paulo and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in 2022), who likewise researches the lives of enslaved women in Brazil, with a particular focus on visual cultures and the era of emancipation. Dr Liz Barnes focusses on sexual violence directed against Black women in the USA , throughout slavery, emancipation and Reconstruction. The department’s British Academy-funded Early Career Researcher (ECR), Dr Beth Wilson, is developing a project that examines how historians can use a history of emotions framework to explore the lives of enslaved people, with a particular focus on women. Three PhD students additionally research gender and slavery in the USA: Aisha Djelid is investigating the ways in which enslavers attempted to enforce reproduction on enslaved people, and the impact of this upon fatherhood; Erin Shearer is reconceptualising the violent resistance of enslaved women; and Katryna Peart is exploring hoodoo beliefs and women’s midwifery practices under enslavement.

Women and political power: disrupting the male narrative of parliament

Jacqui Turner has worked with the British Parliament on the national Vote100 project, a major series of significant exhibitions and events to engage the public with the UK Parliament and enhance the understanding of the struggle for the vote. She was also the national curator for Astor 100 - Celebrating 100 years of women in parliament a programme of public, community and academic events to coincide with the centenary of the first woman to sit in the House of Commons, Nancy Astor. Working with diverse partners, Jacqui established a home for a series of events and exhibitions to address gender balance issues and disrupt the male narrative of parliament. They continue to encourage everyone to think beyond suffrage and more broadly about minority access and contributions to politics and power. Astor 100 will shortly transition to an Astor Research Group maintaining a focus on women and political power in the interwar period. Please see our Open Library of Humanities’ special edition Nancy Astor, Public Women and Gendered Political Culture in Interwar Britain.

Stammtisch - an informal meeting

Stammtisch

This is a monthly informal meeting for the gender history cluster. Academics from beyond the University of Reading with an interest in gender history are welcome. Unless otherwise announced, the stammtisch convenes every last Wednesday of the month at 5pm. Email us at genderhistory@reading.ac.uk.

Who are we?

Staff and students within the research cluster study gender across time and regions. Read on for an introduction to each member and their research.

Staff

Portrait photo of Dr Liz BarnesOil paint of Civil War and reconstruction south USA

Dr Liz Barnes

Dr Liz Barnes’ research focuses on racialised sexual violence in the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction South USA. Within this, the primary aim is to analyse continuities from the antebellum period through the Civil War and into Reconstruction.

Portrait of Visiting Professor Maria Helena MachadoThe Boundaries of Freedom poster

Visiting Professor Maria Helena Machado

Professor Maria Helena Machado is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor from the University of São Paulo. 
Portrait of Dr Heike I. Schmidt'New men' in Zimbabwe - subject of Heike Schmidt's gender history research at the University of Reading.

Dr Heike I. Schmidt

Heike I. Schmidt is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century Southern and East Africa. Her current projects are an African gender history of empire and also a history of belonging, gender, and anti-colonial nationalism in Zimbabwe. 

Women on a march in 1984 - illustrating Nathalie Thomlinson's gender history research

DR Natalie thomlinson

Natalie Thomlinson is a historian of gender and feminism in modern Britain, though her work is fundamentally concerned with how both gender and feminism are mediated through categories of difference such as race and class.


Portrait of Dr Jacqui TurnerNancy Astor

DR Jacqui Turner

Jacqui Turner is a modern British political historian and her research examines the parliamentary contribution of early female MPs, sex-candidacy and marriage during the interwar period in Britain. She has a special interest in Nancy Astor.


Portrait of Professor Emily West Enslaved women in America poster

Professor Emily West

Emily West is an historian of slavery in the antebellum US South. All of her research has focused upon the ways in which gender shaped the everyday experiences of enslaved people, be this in terms of their labour, their family lives and intimate relationships, or physical abuse and sexual exploitation.

Postdoctoral Research Fellows

Portrait of Dr Apurba ChatterjeeSir Ronald Ross with his wife Rosa Bessie Bloxam, and his Indian laboratory assistants standing behind them, from London School of Tropical Medicine.

Dr Apurba Chatterjee

Dr Apurba Chatterjee is a historian of the British Empire, with a specific focus on its cultural politics in India. Her present postdoctoral project at Reading looks at the visual regime of malaria, addressing how colonialism resulted in the global knowledge being gendered and hierarchized.

Portrait of Dr Beth WilsonCover of publication with title Slave Narratives

Dr Beth Wilson

Dr Beth Wilson is a historian of US slavery, and her work has largely focused on using the testimony of enslaved and formerly enslaved people to explore the lived experience of slavery, and more specifically, enslaved people’s emotional experiences.

Postgraduate Students

Portrait of Amy AustinAmy Austin's gender history research includes the history of transmen and transwomen.

amy austin

My research focuses on transgender identities in Britain from 1870 to the 1940s. Through an analysis of medical literature, legal documentation, press coverage and autobiographical material I aim to discover to what degree there was a cultural and medical awareness of trans identities and how these were expressed and treated.

Francesca Baldwin and a male speaker at a conferenceArtwork showing an African woman in folk clothing and jewellery

Francesca Baldwin

My research historicises women’s participation in war and conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia, since 1974. It uses life-history testimonies from female fighters, community workers and activists to expand understandings of what constitutes a “combatant” and a “battlefield” during war.

Portrait of Amie Bolissian Jan Lievens, Head of an old woman seen in profile, c.1629 RKD 61207

Amie Bolissian

My Wellcome-funded doctoral research investigates the experiences of ageing patients in early modern England, c.1570-1730. Contrary to common assumptions, 20% of the adult population was aged over 60 in this period. My study asks how doctors and laypeople understood and treated the diseases and infirmities of this neglected demographic, and seeks to uncover the impact of these conditions on the lives and emotions of sufferers and their families.

Portrait of Aisha DjelidSlavery

Aisha Djelid

My research examines the forced reproduction of enslaved men and women in the antebellum South as a means of sexual exploitation. Forced reproduction was an informal practice where enslavers compelled, either subtly or violently, enslaved men and women to have sexual relationships to produce children for profit.

Portrait of Shingi HopkinsPicture of a woman on a farming land in Africa

Shingi Hopkins

Shingi researches decolonisation and feminism in post-colonial Zimbabwe. She explores African women’s experiences of land reform in the country, which began in 2000, and assesses the intersection of decolonisation and black feminism impacting agency in a socio-economic context of women in a neo-liberal market.

Portrait of Melanie KhuddroBlack and white portrait of a woman in Victorian clothing.

melanie kHuddro

My thesis assesses the degree to which Christian science was effectively utilised by early female members to overcome hostility and access positions of power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I examine the practices, teaching, theology, and structure of the Church to demonstrate how it provided a unique platform for women.

Portrait of Tamisan Latherow Black and white image of a tractor towing straw, and women working around it.

Tamisan Latherow

Tamisan’s primary research focus is on women’s participation in the agri-food industry in England from 1920-1960. She’s interested in how women understand food production and their selection criteria for meal preparation.

Portrait of Shepherd Mutswiri

Shepherd Mutswiri

Shepherd’s project recasts African nationalism by analysing women’s involvement in political nationalism through the lenses of gender and faith. His thesis especially focuses on this intersection of identity by looking at citizenship and belonging to excavate and analyse African political discourse.

Manuscript Leaf with Marriage Scene, from Decretals of Gregory IX, Wikimedia Commons, Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 1.0 Universal

Mari-Liis NeuBauer

My doctoral research project explores the dichotomy between the theory and practice of medieval church law in the context of 12th-to-14th-century Livonia (modern Estonia and Latvia). Canon law at that time regulated the lives of individuals from cradle to grave by governing conversion, baptism, marriage, parental obligations, divorce, but also rape, adultery, sterility and other topics of a similarly gendered nature.
Portrait of Erin ShearerA woman harvesting cotton

Erin Shearer

My research investigates the use of violence by enslaved women in the Antebellum South as a form of resistance between 1815-1861. This thesis will address the fundamental questions: Were women deliberately excluded from organised collective violence because of their gender? Should acts of individual violent discord undertaken by women be categorised as ‘everyday resistance?’ Why have scholars associated violence to be inherently masculine in nature?

Portrait of Michelle TessmannInternal page from '70s copy of The Sun, showing the title: Equal Rights!

Michelle Tessmann

My research examines the ways in which the popular press debated and constructed women's rights and the social-cultural position of women in post-war British society, 1968-1986. It thereby questions how far the public press, influenced by the feminist movement and feminist activist magazines, became an active agent in the changing understanding of gender roles in post-war Britain.

Portrait of Luke WaltersTitle page of a 18th century publication titled: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam and Other Pirates

Luke Walters

Pirates have become staples of popular culture, and they are continually depicted as loveable rogues of questionable sobriety, who prowl the trade routes of the Caribbean sea. However, these sea robbers are not the product of Hollywood swashbucklers, nor the inventions of Robert Louis Stevenson and James Matthew Barrie, they were all too frighteningly real.

Alumni

Matilda of Nevers, the subject of Charlotte Crouch's gender history research

DR CHarlotte crouch

Charlotte is Academic Engagement Manager at the National Archives. Her thesis used marriage documentation produced within both royal and aristocratic contexts to reassess the position of the aristocracy in thirteenth-century France.

Amy Gower's research focuses on gender, feminism and schooling in English comprehensive and grammar schools between 1970 and 2000.

DR AMY gower

My doctoral research project explores gender, feminism and schooling in English comprehensive and grammar schools between 1970 and 2000, by investigating experiences of female students, classroom practices of teachers, and institutional policy.

Portrait of Dr Beth Rebisz

DR beth rebisz

Beth is a social historian of modern Africa, with a particular focus on gender and women's history. Her interests include African oral histories, race and ethnicity, histories of humanitarianism, welfarism and development, counter-insurgency warfare, colonial violence, British imperial history, histories of colonialism and subaltern methodologies.

Selected publications 

Schmidt, H. I. (2015) Shaming Men, Performing Power: Female Authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the Eve of Colonial Rule. In: Shetler, J. B. and Hodgson, D. (eds.) Gendering Ethnicity in African History: Women's Subversive Performance of Ethnicity. Women in Africa and the Diaspora. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI, pp. 265-289

Schmidt, H.I. (2008) Colonial intimacy: the Rechenberg scandal, homosexuality and sexual crime in German East Africa. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 17 (1). pp. 25-59. ISSN 1535-3605

Thomlinson, N. (2016) Race, ethnicity and the women's movement in England, 1968-1993. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. ISBN 9781137442796

Thomlinson, N. and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F. (2018) National Women Against Pit Closures: gender, trade unionism, and community activism. Contemporary British History, 32 (1). pp. 78-100. ISSN 1743-7997

Turner, J. (2018) The Labour Church: religion and politics in Britain 1890-1914. International Library of Political Studies. I.B. Tauris, London, UK, pp. 304

Turner, J. et al (2018) Voice and Vote: Celebrating 100 Years of Votes for Women (London)

Turner, J. (2017) Women and the Vote: Nancy Astor

West, E., Paton, D., Machado M.H.P.T., Cowling, C. (2017) co-editor and introduction co-author, Mothering Slaves: Comparative Perspectives on Motherhood, Childlessness, and the Care of Children in Atlantic Slave Societies. Slavery and Abolition 38 (2) and the Women’s History Review

West, E. (2014) Enslaved women in America: from colonial times to emancipation. African American History Series. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, USA, pp160. ISBN 9781442208711

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