Women & War
22nd March 2024, 9:00 am - 7:00 pm
Joined Conference from King’s College London and Oxford University
This conference brings together two dynamic research fields that have recently discovered more common ground: the History of War and Gender History. The conference discusses new understandings and perspectives about women at and in war, and explores the multiple, complex, and sometimes conflicting roles women played in armed conflict: as soldiers, war leaders, humanitarian workers, civilians, perpetrators, victims, and survivors.
Programme:
09:00 Registration and Welcome
9:15 Session Mobilisation of Women During the World Wars
Chloe Pieters, Oxford, The limits of protection: mobilising the family for war in Belgium and Britain during the First World War
Aimée Fox, KCL, Petticoat Government: Officers’ Wives and the Social Politics of the British Military, 1914–1918
Jonathan Fennell, KCL, The Social Practice of People’s War: Women, Morale and Mobilisation in the Second World War.
11:00 Session Indian Women and WWII
Diya Gupta, City UL, Forging intimate connections between battlefront and home-front: Indian women in the Second World War
Alex Wilson, KCL, “Your father did not slipper you sufficiently, but I will make up for it, never you fear!” Indian Women, Soldiers’ Networks, and the North African Campaign, 1940-43
Urvi Khaitan, Oxford, ‘My Body Costs Five Hundred Rupees’: Women’s Work in War and Famine
13:30 Session Theories of Gender and Historiography of War
Sarah von Hagen, Göttingen, When Men-of-War become female
Kristine Dyrmann, Oxford, Elite women’s social, political, and diplomatic networks during the Napoleonic wars
Anna Brinkman, KCL, Bluestocking Strategists: Women as strategic thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries
15:30 Session Experiences of Women in War
Jane Ohlmeyer, Dublin/Oxford, Women, warfare and sexual violence in early modern Ireland
Meryem Kalayci, Oxford, Women’s stories of sexual violence and caregiving in the Armenian Genocide and after
Lucy Noakes, Essex, Making Grief Work: Gendering Emotions in Second World War Britain
17:00 Roundtable on History of War meets Gender History
Christina Goulter (KCL), Karen Hagemann (UNC), Juliette Pattinson (Kent), Cathleen Sarti (Oxford), Peter Wilson (Oxford)
Registration Link: https://forms.office.com/e/Lp40bpvbVQ