Footballers' Wives and Girlfriends exploded into British pop culture at the turn of the millennium, but what does the WAG tell us about feminism, football and pre-credit crunch Britain? Grace Whorrall-Campbell explores.
How did young couples negotiate sexual activity and its reproductive consequences in Old Regime France? Julie Hardwick discusses the real and perceived risks and uncertainties of courtship, arguing that communities ultimately sought to…
How did US women have abortions when it was illegal? Rosa Campbell explores an archive of US women's testimonies of abortions across borders, in Japan, Puerto Rico and Mexico, with resonances for today.
In the US, abortion rights are under threat. But, as Kelly O'Donnell and Lauren MacIvor Thompson explore, if Roe is lost, we must go back to the beginning, turning to history and what it can reveal about potential paths forward.
This World AIDS Day, Clifford McManus discusses the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt as a radical object of protest and activism, and a symbol of love and remembrance.
In this year's Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture, Hazel Carby uses the lens of her own family history to explore Imperial Sexual Economies. Listen now on the latest episode of the History Workshop Podcast.
Julia Laite discusses her book The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: at once an absorbing historical detective story that puts human faces on the global history of sex trafficking and a riveting meditation on the politics of storytelling.
How did the movements for bodily autonomy by those without the capacity to conceive - travestis, maricas, and gays – contribute to Argentina's recent legalization of abortion? Marce Butierrez and Patricio Simonetto trace the genealogy of…
The "Sex Buyers' Bill" now pending in Parliament aims to protect women from exploitation by criminalizing men who buy sex, yet it is vehemently opposed by UK sex workers. Julia Laite explores the tangled history and woeful consequences of…
How should historians respond to acts of violence in the official archive? Catherine Phipps considers the life of Samia, an Algerian-French teenager, arguing that the epistemic attacks she faced highlight the urgency of historical work…
"I think I was seeking among the tombs of the dead those lost friends; I would not let them go: and with the guiding hand of scholarship and the eye of a historian, against all expectations I found such friendship there in those monuments"…
As an object, the dental dam awkwardly straddles the history of AIDS activism and queer sexuality, acting as an assertion that sex doesn’t require the presence of a penis to be real sex, while acknowledging simultaneously that such sex…
Complicated and often conflicted responses to sex workers who become victims of violence is by no means new, and is not limited to police and the courts. If we look at evidence from earlier centuries it is clear that both social and legal…
How was our understanding of sexuality in history transformed by the liberation movements of the late twentieth century and by the challenge of the AIDS epidemic?
What does the controversy about York's commemorative plaque to Anne Lister suggest about the historical recovery of queer women's identities? Anna Clark explores.
What are we memorialising when we commemorate the Stonewall riots? In the first of a series of articles marking Stonewall's 50th anniversary, Christopher Gioia reflects on the development of the Stonewall legend.
During the Second World War, some 34,000 women were used as prostitutes in Nazi-run brothels across occupied Europe. Their forgotten experience provides the inspiration for Mary Chamberlain's new novel The Hidden.
How did haircutting and haircare shape narratives of slavery, oppression, and belonging in the early modern Mediterranean? Stefan Hanß explores the intimate politics of hair.
The way medieval men write about women can be more sophisticated and less immediately offensive discourse than Trump's pussy-talk, but their language may ultimately share a similarly dismissive attitude toward women as individuals with…
If you were the president of a higher education institution, would you accept a substantial donation to endow a professorship on the condition that you also construct a tunnel between the professor's lodgings and student accommodation? This…
How did a papal diktat on birth control trigger a "Catholic '68" that spread across Europe? Alana Harris investigates a radical moment of cathedral pray-ins and theological dissent aimed at ‘making all things new’.
The Republic of Ireland stands on the brink of its referendum on abortion. Ann Rossiter reports from the campaign trail on the long road to bodily autonomy in Ireland and an opportunity for change
In ‘Fallen Women,’ an exhibition held at the Foundling Museum, curators attempted, rather ambitiously, to explore this depiction of fallen women in period art.
‘What is the History of Sexuality?’ at Birkbeck brought together doctoral students from across the world, and was an opportunity for their innovative research to be critiqued and developed through discussion with scholars in the field.
