Name:

Karen Hunt

Title:

Professor

Qualifications:

BA (Kent), MA (Manchester), PhD (Manchester)

Position:

Professor of Modern British History

Room:

CBB0.028

Telephone:

(01782) 734591

Fax:

(01782) 583195

Email:

k.hunt@his.keele.ac.uk

Departmental Roles:

Convenor: HIS-10022 Historical Research and Writing

Convenor of new interdisciplinary seminar series, Reading and Writing Lives

Subject Areas Taught:

HIS-10021 Introduction to Modern History

HIS –20050 Victorian Society

HIS-20051 Issues in Women's History

HIS-20020 Sources and Debates

New for 2008: Everyday Life (1850-1950)

HIS-30058/30059 Suffrage Stories

Contributions to M.Res.

Research Interests:

Women's Politics ( the range of women's engagements with formal and informal politics):

• Gendered politics in a life: Dora Montefiore (1851-1933)

This is a biography of Dora Montefiore – suffragist, socialist, communist. I am particularly interested in the interplay of politics and everyday life, in mapping individual women's political journeys, in women's local, national and international networks and the effect of gossip on the experience of politics.

• ‘Reconfiguring Citizenship: the impact of women's enfranchisement on local political cultures, 1918-39'

This is a comparative study undertaken with Professor June Hannam (UWE). Its purpose is to explore the impact of the new woman voter on the practice of politics in the interwar period

• Gendering the politics of consumption

This project builds on my earlier work on the politics of consumption and concerns (1) gendering the voice of the consumer during WW1, and (2) the contest over ‘the housewife' in the interwar period.

Most recent publications:

‘Towards a Gendered and Raced Socialist Internationalism: Dora Montefiore Encounters South Africa (1912-14)', African Studies , 66, 2-3, 2007, pp.321-41.

‘Gendering the Politics of the Working Woman's Home' in E. Darling & L. Whitworth (eds), Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870-1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp.106-21.

‘Transnationalism in Practice: The Effect of Dora Montefiore's International Travel on Women's Politics in Britain before World War I' in P. Jonsson, S. Neunsinger & J. Sangster (eds), Crossing Boundaries: Women's Organizing in Europe and the Americas, 1880s-1940s (Uppsala; Uppsala Studies in Economic History 80, 2007), pp.73-94.

‘Women as citizens: changing the polity' in D. Simonton (ed.), The Routledge History of Women in Modern Europe since 1700 (London: Routledge, 2006).

Publications include:

(see following page for full publication list)

Additional Information:

I welcome inquiries from potential research students, particularly in all aspects of the history of women's politics. My current PhD students are working on women's anti-war networks in WW1, on the North West Regional Labour Women's Organisation in the 1970s, on poverty in late C19 mid-Cheshire, and single women in the C19 American South (co-supervised with Professor Martin Crawford).