Creating Successful Community History Projects: A Workshop

Ian Wesley

Speaker

Ian Wesley is a veteran of the UK computer industry. After taking a degree in Physics at Bristol University, he started work in the industry in 1968. Upon retirement in 2007 he developed an interest in local history and archaeology and uses his IT skills to maintain the day-to-day and reference websites of the East Meon History Group.

Ms Carol Anderson

Speaker

For many years as Director of the Oxfordshire Museum and Manager of the County’s Museum Service Carol was privileged to be able to work and volunteer with a wide variety of community groups. This experience proved invaluable when she initially found herself persuading a group in the village where she lived, not to attempt to set up a museum. Eventually as Chair of the Ascott Martyrs Trust, she was tasked with building bridges with the community, raising the profile of this event and eventually celebrating its 150th anniversary.  

Dr Virginia Bainbridge

Speaker

Virginia Bainbridge has taught at a range of higher education institutions, including St. Hilda's College, Oxford and Birkbeck College, London. Throughout her career she has engaged with adult learners and has researched and written history for a general audience. She has worked for the Victoria County History series and the National Archives Manorial Document Register. She published Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Cambridgeshire c.1350-1550 (1996), and is completing a book called Prayer and Power: the Birgittine Nuns of Syon Abbey c.1400-1600.

Dr Laurel Forster

Speaker

Laurel Forster is Associate Professor of Cultural History at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests are in women's cultures, history and literature, and she has published extensively in this area, discussing political and feminist imperatives across print and broadcast genres. Her publications include Historicising the Women's Liberation Movement in the Western World 1960-1999 (2018, with Sue Bruley) and Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s: The Postwar and Contemporary Period (2020). Laurel’s writing explores the changes in women’s lives over the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, in social, domestic and media contexts. Her current projects are 'Writing Herstories', about life writing and feminism; and 'The Determined Sewist', which examines the relationship between politics, craft and the media. Laurel Forster and Sue Bruley co-lead the Heritage Lottery-funded project ‘Hidden Histories: Women’s Activism in Portsmouth since 1960’ which recovered nearly sixty stories of feminism and grass roots activism in Portsmouth.

Dr Sue Bruley

Speaker

Dr Sue Bruley is formerly a Reader in History University of Portsmouth. She is currently Senior Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She is the author of several books, including Women in Britain Since 1900, book chapters and scholarly articles. Specialist in women’s movements from 1945, particularly oral testimony.