This collection of essays brings together an international roster of contributors to provide historical insight into women's agency and activism in education throughout from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Topics discussed range from the strategies adopted by individual women to achieve a personal education and the influence of educated women upon their social environment, to the organized efforts of groups of women to pursue broader feminist goals in an educational context.
The collection is designed to recover the variety of the voices of women inhabiting different geographical and social contexts while highlighting commonality and continuity with reference to creativity, achievement, and the management and transgression of structures of gender inequality.
About the Author: Sarah Jane Aiston is a lecturer in the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Research in Higher Education, School of Education, Durham University. She has an interest in the history of women in higher education and has recently published within this field in 20th Century British History, History of Education and Women's History Review.
Maureen Meikle is a senior lecturer in early modern history in the School of Arts, Design, Media & Culture, University of Sunderland. Her research interests include early modern Scottish Women and Queen Anna of Denmark (1574-1619). She edited, with Elizabeth Ewan, Women in Scotland, c. 1100-c, 1750 (2000).
Jean Spence is a lecturer in Community and Youth Work in the School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University. Her research interests include the history and practice of informal educational approaches, youth work with girls and young women, and gender relations in mining communities. She has recently published in these fields within Women's History Review; Community, Work and Family, Sociological Research Online, and Youth and Policy. She is a co-editor and contributing author to a series of collected essays published by the National Youth Agency relating to the history of Youth and Community Work.
