An IASH Work-in-Progress Seminar given by Dr Elizabeth Darling.
Heroines of the Canongate: discoveries and questions
The aim of my project, Heroines of the Canongate: Women Social and Urban Reformers in Edwardian Edinburgh project is to produce an inclusive, innovative and inter-disciplinary history that highlights the significant role played by women of all classes in reforming urban environments and their formative contributions to debates about the form – social and spatial – of modern Scotland. It focuses on the voluntary social activism of a diverse group of Edinburgh-based women and shows how New-Town-based elite and middle-class professional women worked collectively alongside working-class women. Together they developed a distinctive approach to the re-use of existing buildings and spaces, and created new medical, educational, welfare and domestic environments which would enable the Old Town’s population, young and old, to lead fuller lives and participate fully in Scottish society. These hitherto largely ‘not-seen’ women raise important methodological questions about how we research and write more balanced and inclusive histories, a theme that will form the starting point for my talk. I also aim to introduce some of my preliminary findings and to situate this female activism in wider discourses of progressive social and urban reform.
Please email iash@ed.ac.uk for a private link to join the seminar.