Gresham provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2, videos available on the Gresham website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. Rediscovering remarkable historical figures such as the Birka Warrior Woman, Hildegard of Bingen, and King Jadwiga offers a fresh perspective to understand an era often dismissed as 'nasty, brutish, and short'.
Rather than being exceptions, this lecture reveals the considerable influence and power held by medieval women and sheds light on the gradual erosion of female agency over subsequent centuries. Through their rediscovery, it interrogates traditional historical narratives and constructs more nuanced, inclusive accounts that reflect the richness, complexity and diversity of the past. This is an historic evening. Not only does London explode with the sound of fireworks, lit to commemorate the failure of an attempted regime change.
But tomorrow we will hear news of whether there has been a successful transfer of power in the US. The timing of my lecture could not be more pertinent, since through the night votes will be counted to determine whether, for the first time a woman will be declared President of the United States of America. To date more than a third of countries in the world have had a female ruler, and currently twelve, including Mexico, Italy and Thailand, are ruled by women.
But the position of US President has always been held by a man. Will the glass ceiling ever be shattered, and can we learn how to move forward by looking backwards? However, this lecture is not about binaries - dividing men from women - but rather about asking why so many silenced voices are excluded from traditional history. Issues of race, disability, class, background and sexuality are being foregrounded in all areas of academia now.
As the largest excluded lens, I use women to challenge what has gone before, and explore how we can build a fairer, more equal, future. Women have always made up roughly half the population, so why then do they not feature more prominently in studying the past? I will argue that there are very clear and deliberate moments over the past few centuries that have led to the truism of women as the second sex, and that we need to go back earlier - to the medieval period - to begin to challenge this assumption.
