Fractured Histories: Discovering Women Scientists in the Archive

The history of women’s participation in science is an incomplete and fractured one: for much of the nineteenth century women were typically excluded from ‘masculine’ scientific societies and networks and so negotiated a space to work only at the periphery of their disciplines. As a result, evidence of their scientific contribution is incomplete, scattered and often hidden in the archive.

This workshop seeks to identify women working in science – defined in its broadest sense – from 1830 through to the twentieth century; our aim is to find previously neglected or concealed trails and to use them to evolve a strategy for locating and interrogating records which illuminate the history of scientific women. We shall ask key questions including: What evidence do we already have and where are the gaps? Why were some women recognised by scientific societies and others not? In what ways should we define ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ in science? To what extent can we understand women’s experience as scientists as a gendered one?

Speakers include Anne Locker (Institute of Engineering and Technology), Joanna Corden (The Royal Society) and Patricia Fara (University of Cambridge).