Women's History Scotland was founded as the Scottish Women's History Network in 1995. We have existed in our current form since 1998 and became Women's History Scotland in 2004.
Membership
We have a membership drawn from across Scotland, the UK and overseas which includes academics, independent scholars, teachers, students and anyone interested in women's and gender history. If you would like to join WHS please click here.
Who runs WHS ?
WHS is run by a Steering Committee, elected each year by the membership at the AGM. We meet on a regular basis. The Steering Committee co-ordinates all WHS activities, acting as a focal point for projects, conferences and publications.
Current Steering Committee members:
Lynn Abrams (Convenor) Professor of gender history at the University of Glasgow. Her primary research interests are in modern European and Scottish women's and gender history. She is a co-editor of Gender in Scottish History since 1700 and author of The Making of Modern Woman: Europe 1789-1918 (Longman, 2002) and Myth and Materiality in a Woman's World: Shetland 1800-2000 (MUP, 2005).
Esther Breitenbach is ESRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include: gender equality policy machinery and policies; women in Scottish politics; Scottish women's history; Scottish participation in the British Empire. She has written widely on women in Scotland, and on gender equality and equal opportunities issues. She has worked in social policy, including secondments to the Scottish Executive Equality Unit, and to the Women and Equality Unit in the DTI. She co-edited (with Eleanor Gordon) The World is Ill Divided: Women's Work in Scotland in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (EUP, 1990) and Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society 1800-1945 (EUP, 1992), Her doctoral thesis was on 'Empire, Religion and National Identity: Scottish Christian Imperialism in the 19th and early 20th Centuries'.
Rosalind Carr is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, working on issues of gender and national identity in Scotland from the 1707 Union to the so-called Enlightenment. Before coming to Scotland she worked at the Public Record Office of Victoria and the National Archives of Australia in Melbourne. She also worked as a volunteer with the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Anne Coombs After raising a family of four and as a mature student she gained her history degree as a distance learner with the University of Aberdeen. She is presently working for a Masters degree on the herring gutters from 1840-1950. She works for Historic Scotland and is based in Highland Region.
Elizabeth Ewan (International Officer) has a PhD in Scottish History from the University of Edinburgh and is University Research Chair in history and Scottish studies at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern Scottish women, gender, and crime. Her publications include Townlife in Fourteenth-Century Scotland (EUP, 1990) and the co-edited books, Women in Scotland c.1100-c.1750 (Tuckwell, 1999) and The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.
Linda Fleming completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2005. She is now working as a postdoctoral Research Assistant for Scottish Readers Remember, an AHRC funded study being undertaken at Napier University in Edinburgh. Her research interests include the cultural history of twentieth century Scotland, immigration and ethnicity in nineteenth and twentieth century Scotland and the uses of personal testimony in historical work.
Katharine Glover graduated PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2007, and after a brief spell as a teaching fellow at the University of St Andrew's currently holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. Her post graduate research interests were with the social experience of elite women in the early Scottish Enlightenment, focusing on education, reading, sociability, political involvement and travel. Gender constructs and relationships, particularly as revealed through letters and other family papers, continue to be themes of interest in her current research into polite society in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Eleanor Gordon is Professor of gender and social history at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on the history of the family in the nineteenth century - see Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain (Yale University Press, 2003). She was an associate editor of the Oxford DNB and an adviser and contributor to The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women. More recently she co-edited Gender in Scottish History since 1700. She was co-founder of the Scottish Women's History Network with Esther Breitenbach.
Karly Kehoe received her PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2005 and currently holds a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship with the Department of History at the University of Guelph. She researches women religious and the development of Catholicism in modern Scotland, national identity, community formation and diaspora. Her book, Creating a Scottish Church: Catholicism, gender and ethnicity in nineteenth-century Scotland, is forthcoming and will be published by Manchester University Press.
Ann Kettle (Treasurer and Membership Secretary) 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.
Alison T. McCall gained her history degree as a mature student through the Open University. A member of the Aberdeen and North East Family History Society since 1984, her main interests are in family and local history, and in the education and careers of women in Victorian Aberdeenshire. She has recently completed work on two WHS resources for schools projects.
Lesley Orr is a feminist activist, educator and historian, currently based at Scottish Women's Aid as national training and development worker for the Scottish Executive Violence Against Women National Training Strategy. Previously she has lectured in feminist theology and church history. She is the author of A Unique and Glorious Mission (John Donald, 2000). Her main research interests are embodiment, gender, social movements and religion in modern Scotland. She is currently co-ordinating an oral history project for Scottish Women's Aid, and is involved in an innovative social justice degree programme at Queen Margaret University. She led an action-research project at the University of Edinburgh - Out of the Shadows: Christianity and Violence Against Women in Scotland.
Juliette Pattinson lectures in history at the University of Strathclyde. Her research interests focus on gender, personal testimonies and war and her book Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the SOE in the Second World War, will appear in 2007. In 2008 she will take over the directorship of the Centre for Gender History (formerly Strathclyde Centre in Gender Studies under Professor Eileen Yeo.)
Rose Pipes (Database) is a free-lance editor and writer, formerly a commissioning editor for Oliver & Boyd educational publishers in Edinburgh. She has researched and written two works of local history and several articles relating to nineteenth century co-operative housing in Edinburgh, and is the co-ordinating editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.
Sian Reynolds has a doctorate in history from the University of Paris-VII and is Professor (Emerita) of French at the University of Stirling. She has published monographs and articles on both French and Scottish history, including Britannica's Typesetters: Women Compositors in Edwardian Edinburgh (EUP, 1989), and Paris-Edinburgh: Cultural Connections in the Belle Epoque. (Ashgate, 2007). She is a co-editor of The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.
Deborah Simonton (International Officer) Before moving to Denmark as Associate Professor of British History, she taught women's history and cultural history at the University of Aberdeen. Formerly the convenor of WHS, she is lead editor of the Women's History Magazine. Her research interests lie in issues of work and education in the 18th century, and the development of women's cultural identity in Europe. She has edited The Routledge History of Women in Modern Europe (2006), co-edited Gender in Scottish History since 1700 and Gendering Scottish History: An International Perspective (Craithne Press, 1999), and authored A History of European Women's Work, 1700 to the Present (Routledge, 1998). She is currently working on women in 18th century towns, including Aberdeen.
Perry Willson (Vice-convenor) holds a Chair of History at the University of Dundee. Her publications include The Clockwork Factory. Women and Work in Fascist Italy (OUP, 1993), Peasant Women and Politics in Fascist Italy: the Massaie Rurali (Routledge, 2002) and (ed) Gender, Family and Sexuality: the Private Sphere in Italy 1860-1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). She is currently writing a book on women in twentieth century Italy for Palgrave Macmillan. She is chair of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy, a member of the editorial board of Modern Italy (journal) and of the advisory boards of Gender and History and the on-line journal Storia delle donne. She is also an active member of the Societa delle Storiche (the Italian equivalent of the Women's History Network).
