From parlour sing-songs to iplayers: Experiencing culture in the 20th and 21st century homes

I have a wider range of experience of co-ordinating successful academic symposia and conferences having organised 1 international conference, 4 international symposia and 4 panel sessions at international conferences since 2002. All have kept to budget and several have resulted in well-regarded academic outputs (eg Women and Work Culture, a 3 day international conference at Leeds Metropolitan University that produced Women and Work Cultures (eds Cowman and Jackson, Ashgate, 2005) and a special issue of Women's History Review. In 2009 I was awarded a European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop Grant (EW08-198) one of the first such grants to be secured for a historical project, to investigate ways in which European feminist movements have used historical knowledge in campaigns, producing the required scientific report that identified key findings and pointed to important areas for further research. ESF workshops are designed as one-off events, similar to the AHRC cultural values expert workshops; nonetheless members of the network that developed out of my ESF workshop continue to collaborate on a number of projects demonstrating the ongoing benefits of such exploratory events. Its organisation and the scientific report were commended by the ESF.
My expertise lies in women's history. I have published widely on women and politics in Britain, especially on women's political cultures. My work has featured widely in the media (eg contributor to Ann McElvoy 'British Conservatism the Grand Tour' BBC R4 September 2013 where I discussed the importance of feminine political cultures to securing women's participation). More recently I have been looking at the role of home design in forging political identities amongst new voting women (see Cowman, 'Female Citizenship and the Gendered Domestic Interior in Post-WW1 Britain' presented to European Urban History Conference 2012, currently under review following invited resubmission to English Historical Review). This has led to participation in new collaborative projects considering individual sites within the home - notably the living room - and their connection to shaping gendered identities, which are ongoing. (eg Cowman, contribution to 'The Heart of the Home' funded workshop, Rome, 2013). The home has long been considered as part of the private, intimate sphere, and often overlooked by histories that are concerned with broader public activity; more recent work suggests that it is a critical site for both the formation and practice of a number of cultural and social activities previously unconsidered in this context (see next page).