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HomeAcademic staffProfessor Caitriona Beaumont
Professor Caitriona Beaumont

Professor Caitriona Beaumont

beaumoca@lsbu.ac.uk

Law and Social Science

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1017-8059

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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 trustee/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 MUP in 2013.

I am currently working on four 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. The project will result in a number of outputs including an article in a forthcoming special issue of the international journal Women's History Review.

My second project ‘The Expertise of Experience in Twentieth Century Britain’, is a collaborative project working with 14 academics across the UK. Our project has resulted in the forthcoming co-edited collection (C. Beaumont, E. Colpus & R. Davidson) entitled 'Everyday Welfare in Modern British History: experience, expertise and activism' (Palgrave, in press: 2024). To support the completion of this publication I was awarded a Visiting Fellowship to the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, University of Tampere, March-April 2023.

For my third project I am the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Research Network 'Agency and Advocacy: Locating Women's Grassroots Activism in England and Ireland, 1918 to the present' (August 2022-January 2025).

My final project is 'Afterlives: uncovering the life stories and contributions of activist women in the wake of revolution and civil war: Ireland, Finland and Germany, 1918-1980s'.

External Activities:

I am a Visiting Full Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice (2023-2025).

I sit on the editorial boards of a number of leading international journals, for example Modern British History and Contemporary British History. 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.

You can follow me on X @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
Mr Peter William JonesWere public health initiatives in interwar Bermondsey rightly described as being revolutionary?PhD
Miss Orlagh Isobel MayeDoctoral Research ProjectPhD
Ms Lucy BrownDoctoral Research ProjectPhD
Miss Charlotte Rose TaylorDoctoral Research ProjectPhD
Mr Bohdan AndriichukDoctoral Research ProjectPhD
Ms Rebecca ShepherdVicarious trauma in Cafcass family court social workers – prevalence, recognition and training needsDProf
Mr Mohammad ImranRegional Media and Appeasement: Local Newspaper’s Influence on Appeasement Debate 1936-1939PhD
Ms Andrea Susan ColquhounExploring Constructions of Commitment for Women in Mid and Later Life Aged 50 to 65 PhD
Kimberly Chandler PhD

Awarded in the last 5 years
Mrs Sarah MertonFat as a Feminist Issue: Activism and Agency in the Body Positive Movement PhD
Ms Emma Elizabeth WilliamsPolice decision-making in rape investigations: Exploring the barriers to reformPhD
BA (Hons.) History and Politics

University College Dublin

1985
1988
MA Modern Irish History

University College Dublin

1987
1989
PhD in Social History

University of Warwick

1994
1997
Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

London South Bank University

1998
1999
Lecturer in British Social History
University of Glasgow

1997
1998
Education
Royal Historical Society
2020
Institute of Historical Research
2020
Social History Society
2020
Women’s History Network
2020
Voluntary Action History Society (VAHS)
2020
Irish Association for Women’s History
2020
Committee of the Voluntary Action History Society (VAHS)
2012
2018
Twentieth Century British History

Editorial/Advisory Board Member
2020
Contemporary British History

Editorial/Advisory Board Member
2014
Local Economy

Editorial/Advisory Board Member
2015
Editorial Board for Adam Matthews Online Digital Resources (Sage Publishing): Gender: Identity and Social Change Collection

Editorial/Advisory Board Member
2018
Adam Matthews Online Digital Resources (Sage Publishing)

Invited to join the Adam Matthews Digital Future Scholarship Advisory Board 2022-23.

Editorial/Advisory Board Member
2022
2023
Women's History Review
Twentieth Century British History
Journal of Contemporary History
International Review of Social History
Social History
Journal of Contemporary History
Gender and Society
Feminist Media Studies
Gender and Education
History of Education
2020
2020
National University of Ireland Post Doctoral Fellowships in the Humanities Award
2020
2020
Irish Research Council Advanced Laureate Award
2018
2018
National Research Foundation
2021
2021
Royal Historical Society
Other

Council Member and Trustee of the Royal Historical Society 2022-2025.

I am a member of the Research Support Committee, Research Strategy Committee and the General Purposes Committee.

December 2025
University College Dublin, Ireland
Visiting professor

Visiting Full Professor in the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice/Gender Studies.

June 2023
June 2025
University College Dublin, Ireland

Collaboration with colleagues in Department of History and Gender Studies in the 'Afterlives: uncovering life stories and contributions of activist women in the wake of revolution and civil war: Ireland, Finland, Germany, 1918-1980s'.

February 2023
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. This has resulted in a new co-edited collection (Beaumont, Colpus, Davidson) 'Everyday Welfare in Modern British History: experience, expertise, activism' (in press, Palgrave: 2024). To complete this publication I was awarded a Visiting Fellowship to HEX, March-April 2023.


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


Agency and Advocacy: Locating Women's Grassroots Activism in England and Ireland, 1918 to the present (Aug 2023)

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

How can local grassroots women's organisations in Ireland and England, active since the early twentieth century, identify strategies to safeguard survival in the future? How can organisations representing a majority of middle-aged and older women attract new members to diversify and expand? How can they utilise organisational histories to make visible local, national and global activism, informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals? Can shining a light on the history of local grassroots organisations change academic and public understandings of the women's movement and Anglo-Irish relations over the course of the twentieth century? By bringing scholars, Early Career Researchers (ECRs), and stakeholders from across Ireland and England together in the proposed network we seek to identify new ways forward to tackle these challenges.

The research network comprises of five workshops co-designed by the Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigator (Co-I) and representatives of our three participating women's organisations, the Irish Countrywomen's Association (ICA), the Women's Institutes (WI) and the Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI). Workshops are organised around five co-identified themes: legacies, advocacy, grassroots activism, visibility and sustainability. A small pilot study in May/June 2022 funded by LSBU UKRI Participatory Research Allocation 2021/22 and co-designed by the PI, Co-I and the SIGBI Tunbridge Wells Branch, trialled the use of participatory research and informs the co-design of this new international research network.

Three workshops will be in person and two online (including a one day online conference open to a wider audience) to ensure inclusivity and accessibility for network members. Workshop 1 consolidates the use of participatory research by bringing together members of the network Steering Committee (SC) and representatives of our three stakeholder organisations. Here we will confirm the co-design of the subsequent workshops and learn about the rich historical legacy and cross-border interconnections between the ICA, WI and SIGBI. Workshop 2 develops these themes with a one-day conference highlighting the grassroots activism of local women's organisations since 1918 and a training workshop for ECRs and network members on participatory research methodology. Workshop 3 takes an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together experts in history, sociology and material culture with network members to identify the most effective 'repertoires of collective action' for local grassroots women's organisations. Workshop 4 adopts the innovative visual sociological method of photo-elicitation to create space for members of the ICA, WI and SIGBI to share experiences as members of local grassroots women's organisations. Workshop 5 concludes the network with its focus on inclusivity and diversity. Here network members and researchers will co-create strategies to support local grassroots women's organisations to expand and diversify their memberships in order to safeguard their activist futures. Each workshop will be evaluated and responses will inform the design of subsequent workshops.

The network has transformative impact potential. For the ICA, WI and SIGBI the co-produced outcomes can be disseminated among the wider membership. This in turn will enable local actions to be developed to replicate network activities and support future sustainability. Individual organisations can adapt the network's outcomes for their own purposes, thereby avoiding a 'one size fits all' approach. The impact of the network goes beyond the three participating organisations. A wider group of civil society associations can access and utilise the network's activism tool-kit and resources via the LSBU website or on request. Enabling on-going activism of grassroots organisations in this way, the network directly contributes to enriching lives locally, nationally and internationally.


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)


AFTERLIVES PODCAST: Grannies, Guns, and Archives - Tracing revolutionary & post revolutionary women's lives (Jul 2023)


Irish referendum: how the Catholic church shaped Ireland’s constitution to define the status of women (Feb 2024)


“Battling, not Bottling”: the transformative power of WI activism
Beaumont, C. (2024). “Battling, not Bottling”: the transformative power of WI activism. WI Life.

How a photograph uncovered my grandmother's republican activism during the Irish Revolution
Beaumont, C. (2022). How a photograph uncovered my grandmother's republican activism during the Irish Revolution . The Conversation.

ODNB Profile Elizabeth Abbott
Beaumont, C. (2022). ODNB Profile Elizabeth Abbott. Oxford University Press (OUP).

ODNB Profile Rosamund Fisher
Beaumont, C. (2022). ODNB Profile Rosamund Fisher. Oxford University Press (OUP).

Women's Organisations, Active Citizenship and the Peace Movement: New Perspectives on Peace Activism in Britain 1918 to 1939
Beaumont, C. (2022). Women's Organisations, Active Citizenship and the Peace Movement: New Perspectives on Peace Activism in Britain 1918 to 1939. in: Gottlieb, J.V. and Gaynor Johnson (ed.) Gendering Peace in Europe c. 1880-2000 Routledge.

Post-War Societies: Great Britain and Ireland
Beaumont, C. (2021). Post-War Societies: Great Britain and Ireland . 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopaedia of the First World War .

Women in Parliament from 1918-2020
Beaumont, C. (2020). Women in Parliament from 1918-2020.

Women in Public Life
Beaumont, C. (2020). Women in Public Life. in: Jolly, M. and Russell, P. (ed.) Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights The British Library.

Networks as ‘laboratories of experience’: exploring the life cycle of the suffrage movement and its aftermath in Ireland 1870–1937
Beaumont, C., Clancy, Mary and Ryan, L. (2020). Networks as ‘laboratories of experience’: exploring the life cycle of the suffrage movement and its aftermath in Ireland 1870–1937. Women's History Review. 29 (6), pp. 1054-1074. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2020.1745414

Women’s Organisations, Active Citizenship, and the Peace Movement: New Perspectives on Female Activism in Britain, 1918-1939
Beaumont, C. (2020). Women’s Organisations, Active Citizenship, and the Peace Movement: New Perspectives on Female Activism in Britain, 1918-1939. Diplomacy & Statecraft. 31 (4), pp. 697-721. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2020.1842063

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography August 2019 Update Gertrude Horton
Beaumont, Caitriona (2019). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography August 2019 Update Gertrude Horton.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography August 2019 Update Margaret Fletcher
Beaumont, Caitriona (2019). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography August 2019 Update Margaret Fletcher.

The Transnational Women’s Suffrage Movement: how the vote was won in the USA, 1848-1920
Beaumont, C (2018). The Transnational Women’s Suffrage Movement: how the vote was won in the USA, 1848-1920. Adam Matthew.

Reference to Women's Place in the Home must be removed from Constitution
Beaumont, C (2018). Reference to Women's Place in the Home must be removed from Constitution. Irish Times.

After the Vote: Women, citizenship and the campaign for gender equality in the Irish Free State 1922-1943
Beaumont, C (2018). After the Vote: Women, citizenship and the campaign for gender equality in the Irish Free State 1922-1943. in: Ryan, L and Ward, M (ed.) Irish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens Dublin, Ireland Irish Academic Press.

What do women want? Housewives’ associations, activism and changing representations of women in the 1950s
Beaumont, C (2017). What do women want? Housewives’ associations, activism and changing representations of women in the 1950s. in: Tinkler, P, Spencer, S and Langhamer, C (ed.) Women in Fifties Britain: A New Look London Routledge.

The Mothers' Union and the Women's Movement: a history of female activism 1876-2017
Beaumont, C (2017). The Mothers' Union and the Women's Movement: a history of female activism 1876-2017. Families First.

Housewives and Citizens: Encouraging Active Citizenship in the Print Media of Housewives' Associations during the Interwar Years
Beaumont, C (2017). Housewives and Citizens: Encouraging Active Citizenship in the Print Media of Housewives' Associations during the Interwar Years. in: DiCenzo, M, Clay, C, Green, B and Hackney, F (ed.) Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain: the Interwar Period Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press.

What Do Women Want? Housewives' Associations, Activism and Changing Representations of Women in the 1950s
Beaumont, C (2016). What Do Women Want? Housewives' Associations, Activism and Changing Representations of Women in the 1950s. Women's History Review. 26 (1), pp. 147-162. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2015.1123029

What is a Wife? Reconstructing Domesticity in postwar Britain before The Feminine Mystique
Beaumont, C (2015). What is a Wife? Reconstructing Domesticity in postwar Britain before The Feminine Mystique. History of Women in the Americas. 3, pp. 61-76. https://doi.org/10.14296/hwa.v3i0.2186

Fighting for the Privileges of Citizenship: The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), feminism and the women's movement, 1928-1945
Beaumont, C (2014). Fighting for the Privileges of Citizenship: The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), feminism and the women's movement, 1928-1945. Women's History Review. 23 (3), pp. 463 - 479. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2013.820600