Academic staff

Professor of Social History since 2020, I joined LSBU in 1998 as Lecturer in History in the School of Law and Social Sciences (LSS). I was awarded a BA (Hons.) History and Politics Degree in 1988 and an MA Modern Irish History in 1989 from University College Dublin, followed by a PhD in Social History from the University of Warwick in 1996. From 2015 to 2022 I was Director of Research for LSS. I teach across Criminology, Politics and Sociology Degrees at LSBU and currently supervise six MPhil/PhD/Post-Doctoral students. I am a Council member of the Royal Historical Society.

Research:

I am an expert on the history of female activism, female networks and women’s movements in Ireland and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth century. My first book, 'Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England 1928-1964' was published by Manchester University Press in 2013.

I am currently working on four new research projects.

The first is a study of intergenerational activism within the women's movement in late twentieth century Britain. This project for the first time investigates the interaction between traditional housewives’ associations and the Women’s Liberation Movement. My second project ‘The Expertise of Experience in Twentieth Century Britain’, is a collaborative project working with 14 academics across the UK to produce a new edited collection on 'Histories of Welfare'. I have been awarded a Visiting Fellowship to the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, University of Tampere, to complete this new publication.

My third project utilises participatory research to work with historic women's organisations with the aim of safeguarding their future activism. The final project adopts a family history methodology to explore the lifelong activism of my grandmother during, and after, the Irish Civil War.

External Activities:

I am highly networked and a member of a range of professional societies and organisations. I am an elected Council Member and Trustee of the Royal Historical Society (2022-2025) and member of the Women’s History Network, the Social History Society, Women’s History Association of Ireland and the Institute of Historical Research. I sit on the editorial boards of a number of leading international journals, for example Twentieth Century British History, and have recently been appointed to the Adam Matthews Digital Future Scholarship Advisory Board. I am a peer reviewer for a wide range of journals and publishers and have experience as a referee for national and international research-funding bodies. In 2022 I was appointed to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College.

I have published my work across a range of online platforms including essays for The British Library website and the 1914-1918-online International Encyclopedia of the First World War. You can follow me on Twitter @caitbeaumont.

In 2018, I worked with Channel 4 News on a short film 'Suffragettes vs Suffragists: Did violent protest get women the vote? to mark the centenary of the partial extension of the parliamentary franchise to women in the UK', available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw0IAFIhVfA

Courses taught

Politics and International Relations - BA (Hons)

Politics (Social Policy) - BA (Hons)

Criminology - BSc (Hons)

Sociology - BSc (Hons)

Social Sciences - PhD / MRes

Postgraduate Research Supervision

Current

Awarded in the last 5 years

Prizes, awards, and accolades

Visiting Fellowship (Apr 2023)

Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX)

I am the co-lead (with Dr Eve Colpus and Dr Ruth Davidson) of the ‘Expertise of Experience Collective’, a network of 14 academics from across the UK. The network was established in 2019 (with financial support from LSBU) and has held a number of workshops culminating in the planned edited collection entitled ‘Histories of Welfare: experiential expertise, action and activism in twentieth century Britain’. In January 2022 I was awarded a Visiting Fellowship (jointly with Dr Colpus and Dr Davidson) to HEX and we will take up our fellowship from March-April 2023 and use this time to complete the final manuscript of this new edited collection.

UKRI Participatory Research Funding Allocation 2021/22 (Jun 2022)

UKRI /LSBU

As the Principal Investigator (PI) I was awarded UKRI Participatory Research Funding Allocation 2021/22 (via LSBU) of £6000 for a pilot project entitled 'Agency and Advocacy: Locating Women’s Grassroots Activism in England and Ireland, 1918 to the present'. This pilot project consisted of 2 X workshops in Tunbridge Wells, Kent with the Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI) Tunbridge Wells Club. The research team included: Dr Anne Logan (Kent), Co-I, Dr Ruth Davidson (Queen Mary) and Dr Anna Muggeridge (Worcester). The project was completed in September 2022.

LSBU Inaugural Lecture: Beyond Women's Liberation (Oct 2022)

LSBU

Reach and Impact

How a photograph uncovered my grandmother's republican activism during the Irish revolution (Oct 2022)

Suffragettes Vs Suffragists: Did Violent Protest Get the Vote for Women? (Feb 2018)

Post-War Societies: Great Britain and Ireland (Jun 2021)

Reference to Women's Place in the Home Must be Removed from the Irish Constitution (Oct 2018)