Were you at the WOVA conference in 1996?
Filia has some funding to digitise the recordings which were made at the Women Overcoming Violence and Abuse (WOVA) international conference which took place on 10-15 November 1996 in Brighton. They are keen to be in touch with anyone who was a speaker, or who was involved in organising the conference, or who attended it. Please get in touch with marie@filia.org.uk
PhD opportunity: Feminism, Socialism and Red Rag
The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester and the People’s History Museum (PHM) are offering a fully-funded PhD opportunity, ‘Total Liberation’: Feminism, Socialism and Red Rag (1972-1980), starting 1 October and running for 3.5 years.
‘We are in no mood’, stated the first editorial of British feminist-socialist periodical Red Rag: a Magazine of Liberation, ‘to wait for socialism to bring us liberation.’ Red Rag brought together and shaped leading post-war feminists, and provided cutting-edge analysis of key issues around gender, class and sexuality, but has been overlooked by historians. This fully-funded PhD project seeks to fill that gap. In addition to writing a PhD thesis, the successful applicant will conduct various tasks related to cataloguing and promoting the PHM’s holdings in feminist history, benefitting from expert training in archival research, digitisation, cataloguing and public engagement.
Closing date for applications is by email to daniela.caselli@manchester.ac.uk by 5pm on 22 February. Full details of the project and how to apply are at http://www.nwcdtp.ac.uk/funding-prospective-students/ (scroll to the bottom of the page).
Spare Rib no longer available online
As a result of the UK leaving the European Union, the online facility to search Spare Rib on the British Library website is no longer available. The copyright status of the digitised magazine relied on the EU Orphan Works directive, which now no longer applies. While this is a disappointment to anyone researching the UK women’s movement, the British Library Spare Rib website still exists and contains essays, images and a timeline. More information
Access to FAN collections now available
Special Collections is now open to researchers on a limited basis. There are four researcher desks available, Monday to Thursday, 10am-1pm and 2pm-4pm. Booking has to be made online, at least five days in advance. You’ll find information on how to do this is at https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1504/using_collections/78/plan_a_visit/2
You can search the FAN collections at https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections/collection/705/feminist_archive_north
If you want to use this service to view FAN materials, please bear in mind that some of our collections are not catalogued, or are only partially catalogued, and it may not be possible for you to identify exactly what you want to see. Special Collections staff are unable to give advice on the FAN collections, and as the FAN office remains closed, we are currently unable to assist researchers in retrieving relevant materials. You are, of course, welcome to email us at fa_north@yahoo.co.uk and we will do our best to help.