It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
Coming across a compilation of University of Oxford women's exam papers from the 1870s and 80s was something of a treat for me. Having studied History and German at Oxford from 2011-2015, I was eager to find out how the exam papers from 130 years ago differed from those now. Imagine, then, my horror when I …
Although European society has changed hugely since the Middle Ages, some documents and objects from the time still have the power to speak straight down the centuries and demonstrate that despite radically altered worldviews, we do have things in common with our medieval ancestors. I was reminded of this when I came across a collection …
Continue reading The Bank of Mum and Dad, funding students since 1200
Inspired by a recent re-read of Philip Larkin's Jill, the story of a working class northern student in 1940s Oxford, I decided to do some research on early twentieth century student life in Oxford. While I've always known that Oxford a hundred years ago was a heavily male-dominated place, until this week I'd not realised the …
Continue reading Boys will be boys: gender segregation in Edwardian Oxford