Friends’ talks programme, Spring and Summer 2025:
Wednesday May 7th at 2.30 pm: Dr Clara Jones will speak on ‘Elizabeth Bowen and the Women’s Institute’ with commentary from Dr Anne Logan.
Dr Jones is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at King’s College London and the author of Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist (Edinburgh: EUP, 2016). Her current research focuses on the political commitments and literary practice of British interwar women writers and activists, including Ellen Wilkinson, Rosamond Lehmann and Amabel Williams-Ellis.
Wednesday June 25th, the Friends AGM will take place from 5.30 pm onwards, venue to be announced. Our speaker will be Professor Lynn Abrams, speaking on her most recent book, Feminist Lives.
Almost all talks are hybrid, i.e. for personal and Zoom attendance. Login details are circulated nearer each date.
IN ADDITION to the above, we have news from further afield:
Elizabeth Crawford reports that the Friends might be interested to know of the series of talks hosted by the Victorian Society on https://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/national-news/victorian-and-edwardian-women-in-architecture/ . The talks are recorded, so the two that have already gone out live (hers and Lynne Walker’s) can still be purchased as recordings.
Friday 11 July 2025, online at the Open University
1885 and its long shadow: sexual offences in historical context
Hosted by The Open University Legal Histories Research Cluster and the British Sociological Association Global Histories and Sociology Study Group.
Proposals for 15-minute papers should be submitted by email to OULS-legalhistory@open.ac.uk by Friday 16 May.
If you have questions, contact Claire Cunnington – claire.cunnington@sheffield.ac.uk – or Caroline Derry – caroline.derry@open.ac.uk
18th September 2025 | Newnham College, Cambridge
Codebreakers and Groundbreakers: Women’s Work in the Second World War
This one-day conference builds on the exhibition Newnham and Bletchley Park: Women’s Work in World War II, which opened at Newnham College, Cambridge, in March 2024 and received national press coverage. The research uncovered 77 alumnae of Newnham College who were employed at Bletchley Park during the Second World War in a variety of analytic, decryption and translation roles. The classified nature of work at Bletchley prevented women from speaking about their employment in later years, requiring researchers to undertake a five-year project to piece together their vital contributions to the war effort.
The conference will provide an opportunity to take stock of the research on Newnham, establish lines of enquiry for research into other institutions from which women were recruited into Bletchley, and set a broader context for the wider mobilisation and employment of women during the Second World War.
Registration details are available here or by emailing herwarwork@newn.cam.ac.uk,