Susannah Butland, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies

Researching Suffragettes in the Archives

With the suffragettes being such a well known period in history, it would be expected that archives all around the country would contain the quantity of sources to reflect this. However, the archives challenge this belief by containing limited sources directly in relation to this period in time. Using two archival sources, one local and the other a national print, this project will use these to look both at the significance of this time period, and highlight the challenges with finding such sources. The use of both a national and local source allows us as historians to understand what women at the time thought about the situation, and the reasoning behind the commencement of their actions. The focus is then being placed on the individuals rather than government reactions and media depictions of them, which can distort the historical narrative of this period.

This presentation will use the suffragettes to highlight the process of researching their history within the archives, alongside the benefits and challenges of using archives to aid historical research. Archives are an exemplary resource for researching the suffragettes, providing details into the lives of those that were a part of the movement. However they are also a hindrance in their limited number of sources, the websites being difficult to navigate, and the sources descriptions limited in details.

BA History & Chinese, Third Year
Hi! My name is Susannah and I am a 3rd Year undergraduate student studying History and Chinese (Mandarin). I'm from Exeter so Leeds is quite a long way away from home. I just came back from my year abroad in Taiwan, where I had 9 months of intensive Mandarin language teaching. I can speak English, Mandarin and a little Dutch. I absolutely love studying history, particularly when delving into the lives other people; discovering how they lived, thought, what they ate, etc.