It is officially Women’s History Month in the UK, and the LSE is all geared up to celebrate! There are several events taking place both online and offline throughout the month to inspire the LSE community. There are also several resources which have been prepared by the university to ensure that everybody, whether a student at the LSE or not, gets to celebrate this wonderful month and increase their knowledge on the subject in one way or another. Here are some of the resources I found particularly interesting, and I recommend checking them out if you want to learn more about the contributions made by women to significant events in history.
Helen Williams from the Library Metadata team has created a fascinating interactive timeline of all the women who were educated at LSE. It is colour coded according to the birthplace of the women which makes it very easy to navigate the timeline. Starting in the 1900s, the timeline comes all the way up to the present. I spent hours going through the names, trying to spot familiar ones, and discovering familiar names which I had no clue attended the LSE. When I used the birthplace filter to see Indians who had studied at LSE, I was pleasantly surprised to see Karthika Nair’s name. She is an actress in the Tamil and Telugu film industry in south India. This is a great way to actively get involved in the history of women who have formed an integral part of the LSE community.
Heather Dawson from the LSE Library has created a Women’s History Month advent calendar and it is the cutest thing I have seen. The LSE Library has numerous archives and extensive resources, but my idea of a celebration does not necessarily include flipping through archives. This calendar is a fun and interactive way to access some of the most interesting archives preserved at LSE.
There are also other resources from all over the UK which makes this a great one-stop-shop to learn about the contributions of women to history. So far, I have discovered some amazing webinars and a great online exhibition titled ‘Postcards and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage.’ My favourite discovery has been an amazing collection of digitized feminist pamphlets from the interwar years in the LSE archives.
The Women’s Library Reading Room is located on the fourth floor of the LSE library and it is one of my favourite spots for silent studying. However, I had no idea about the rich and long history of the Women’s Library at the LSE which goes back all the way to the nineteenth century. LSE’s Digital Library has more than 300 items from the Women’s Library and I recently discovered an interactive timeline on their website which allows you to navigate through these resources. The collection includes pamphlets, journals, archives, photographs and so much more! I highly recommend checking it out to get a taste of the extensive resources available at the Women’s Library.
