Coming out of the shadows: Women and geology in Oxford: 1813-1914

In 2019, the University of Oxford appointed its first female Professor of Geology, but women have been involved in geological researches at Oxford for more than two centuries. During the early years of the professorship, William Buckland's teaching and curation depended to a significant extent on the work of his wife Mary, and the invisible labour of women continued to be important after the building of the University Museum. This project explores the shifting activity of women in Oxford geology as a means of charting the changing opportunities and roles for women in science in Britain across the long nineteenth century.

The project draws on the manuscript and object collections of OUMNH both to recover the often hidden work of women in collecting, curating, and drawing specimens, and to contextualize emerging, more publicly visible, forms of work in describing, theorizing, and writing. A strong backbone is given to the project by the women who worked alongside Oxford's professors in succession to Buckland. Anne Phillips, Grace Prestwich, and Igerna and Hertha Sollas (whose brother, husband, and father, respectively, were professors of geology) were all very active geologists, and across the later nineteenth century progressively occupied more public roles, culminating in Igerna Sollas's lectureship at Newnham College Cambridge from 1903. In addition, the project encompasses a wide range of other women involved as collectors, informants, and assistants, seeking to restore them to visibility and to understand their changing role, individually and collectively.

This focused study of a remarkable group of women associated with a single institution over an extended period is the first study of its kind, offering important insights into the emergence of a recognized role for women in geology in the long nineteenth-century.