Were you or are you still involved in any Women’s Liberation activities? Do you have any feminist newsletters, magazines, conference papers, photographs, badges, posters, leaflets or anything else? Would you like them to find a good home where they will be useful and of interest to generations to come?

The Feminist Archive consists entirely of material that has been donated, and we are always keen to enrich the scope of our collections. If you were, or are, involved in any women’s movement activities or have material you would like to donate to the Archive please get in touch. We are particularly interested in material from the early days of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain, but everything is welcome. Although the material is kept at Leeds University, it belongs to the Feminist Archive and consists of permanent donations and material on loan to be returned to donors on request.

All donated materials go through a preservation process, which does cost money. We appreciate a financial donation towards the cost of this.

Feminist Archive North is based in Special Collections, which is part of the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. All our materials can only be viewed in the Special Collections reading room. We do not allow material out on loan.

If you want to view materials, you need to arrange this in advance. If you have found exactly what you want in the online catalogue you can make arrangements direct with the Special Collections staff to see it.

If, however, your query is more general, or you can’t find want you’re looking for in the online catalogue, please contact us direct. We can then discuss with you how we can help. Please note that we are generally only in the archive on Thursdays, so you may have to wait for a response.

If you want to visit the FAN office to talk to us in person, you will also need to arrange this in advance.

For details of opening times and disability access see Contact us.

Feminist Archive North’s collections are regularly used by students, academics and activists for research or for interest. Whatever your particular area of interest, we will try to see if we can help with any relevant materials.

We hold over 1700 local, regional and international feminist newsletters, journals and pamphlets, many unique to the FAN collection. Our collections include material on family, health, employment, social policy issues, the arts, media, militarism and peace, lesbians, women’s studies, women’s aid, local women’s centres, criminal justice, men’s violence against women and girls, and the politics of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Our collections are available to search online in Leeds University’s Special Collections database.
Search FAN online

If you are interested in Spare Rib, you can also search online on the British Library website.
Search Spare Rib

If you want to view materials, see Visiting the Archive. If you have materials you would like to donate to FAN see Donating material

Digital Oral Histories

Two sets of oral history interviews held by FAN have been digitised and are available to hear via our online catalogue. There are 20 interviews from a 1995 project on women in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Leeds and Bradford,  and 12 interviews done by by Lee Comer and Lou Lavender in 2007 with 1970s and 1980s feminist activists in West Yorkshire. Click on the blue ‘digital media’ button you will see at the top of the page.

You may also be interested in a series of oral histories recently carried out by the Remembering Resistance project with women political activists in the North.