- History Research Group
About me
I am a historian of women's employment and the women's movement in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Britain.
I graduated with a BA Honours in English Literature & History from the University of Lancaster, from where I also gained a Masters in Historical Research, specialising in social and cultural history. In 2010 I earned a PhD from the University of London (Institute of Historical Research), having completed a thesis funded by the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award Scheme, which allowed me to work with the British Postal Museum & Archive (now The Postal Museum). I have worked at the University of Westminster since 2007.
Teaching
I teach on a range of modules in History at Westminster, including those related to the history of London and more broadly to the social and cultural history of Britain. At third year undergraduate level, I offer special subjects on women workers in London and on technological and cultural change in the 1980s and 1990s.
Research
My work centres on questions around women's employment, feminism, and women in public life in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I am also interested in representations of women in popular culture and in museums.
In 2016 my monograph Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: women's work in the Civil Service and the London County Council 1900-55 was published by Manchester University Press. I am now working on a book project on the marriage bar and social and cultural debates about married women's paid work, c.1870-1960. I have also published a number of journal articles and book chapters on topics related to these two projects, as well as on women in magazines, cultural representations of women telephonists, and women's occupational associations.
I am developing a new project on the rise and fall of the typing pool as a phenomenon in office cultures.
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.