How did enslaved women calculate risks when petitioning for their freedom in colonial Mexico? Amos Megged explores the complex life story of María de la Candelaria, arguing that enslaved women sought restitution of their rights, and petitioned for the status of their children to be similarly recognised.
How did women escape domestic abuse in late medieval London? Charlotte Berry explores how women navigated the social and economic barriers to leaving a violent marriage to find a safe place to live in a medieval city.
Rebecca Turkington explores the rise of #MeToo in China and the way it draws on global links and offers a model for organizing in hostile circumstances. #MeToo in China is made possible through rich histories of Chinese feminists organising inside, alongside and beyond the state.
In Britain today, 9 out of 10 women marrying men will change their name on marriage. Rebecca Mason discusses the history of female name changing after marriage in Britain, arguing that reference to tradition is not necessarily rooted in history.
Cherish Watton considers what a scrapbooking scene in a recent BBC drama can tell us about the value of scrapbooks as radical sources for uncovering women’s lives.
What can the arrival of an anonymous letter to a local police station tell us about the administration of justice in nineteenth-century Scotland? Hannah Telling discusses the case surrounding the discovery of a woman’s body in 1853, and what this can tell us about male responses to sexual violence, both in the past and today.
Madeleine Goodall discusses the radical life of Eliza Sharples, whose letters to freethinking poet Thomas Cooper in the mid-19th century depict an idealistic figure struggling to survive.
