Category: Beyond Notability

Return to CollEge Hall

19/3/2023

By Amara Thornton

I've had a short guest post published on the Senate House Library blog, to accompany an exhibition currently on display in the Library. It's all about College Hall, the residence for university women in London. The Library's display contains some gems from the College Hall archive, including a few photographs of some of the Hall's residents, including Mary Brodrick and Louisa Macdonald, both of whom feature in our Beyond Notability database. You can read my post here.

Modelling Excavations

9/10/2022

By Amara Thornton

Right at the end of the September my latest Beyond Notability blog post was published. 'Modelling Excavations with Wikibase' explores how we have created a model for representing excavations on our Wikibase site, enabling us (where we have the data) to show that excavations are a community. Examples include excavations at Colchester, Essex in the 1930s, and Saqqara, Egypt in the 1900s, drawing on information archaeological reports and popular periodicals.

On Work

30/4/2022

By Amara Thornton

My post for this month on the Beyond Notability website explores the many ways in which we are approaching work, through the life of Welsh antiquarian Gwenllian Morgan. We've had some lively discussions about how we represent work, and I'm sure there are more to come! Read the post "Working with Gwenllian Morgan" here: beyondnotability.org/biographical/working-with-gwenllian-morgan/

Voices from the Archive

26/3/2022

By Amara Thornton

This month, the Beyond Notability project had its first (of three) International Women's Day events. It was a twitter takeover, and as part of it I was delighted to be able to arrange some new content - recordings of letters held in the archives of the Victoria County History (VCH). These letters were from two women who are now in our database: historian Eliza Jeffries Davis, and archaeologist Margerie Venables Taylor. Both women worked for the VCH as researchers and writers, contributing the fruits of their labours to the county histories which formed the core product of the VCH. More on the Beyond notability blog: beyondnotability.org/biographical/international-womens-day/

A Database Debut

31/1/2022

By Amara Thornton

This month's Beyond Notability post is a guided tour through the project database. We have been adding individuals, events, organisations, and more to the database over the past few months, and now have a useful set of data to help us think through how we catalogue and what we catalogue to represent women's work in archaeology, history and heritage.

Read "Introducing Our Database" here.

A Biographical Guest Post

30/12/2021

By Amara Thornton

This month's post for Beyond Notability is a guest post on the Institute of Classical Studies blog. The subject of the post, Gertrude Rachel Levy, was a librarian for the Hellenic and Roman Societies in the 1930s and 1940s, and the ICS now holds a small collection relating to her. The post, however, focuses (thanks to the archives at the Palestine Exploration Fund) on one aspect of her life - the time she spent in Mandate Palestine and Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s. Read on at "Gertrude Rachel Levy in Mandate Palestine".

Congress Records

30/11/2021

By Amara Thornton

My post for this month is on the Beyond Notability blog. It explores the Congress of Archaeological Societies (CAS), founded in 1888 as an umbrella organisation for local and regional archaeological and historical societies in Britain. We've been examining the records the Congress produced for women's names and activities. Read "The Congress of Archaeological Societies" here.

New Beginnings...

30/10/2021

By Amara Thornton

At the beginning of the month I started a new position as Co-Investigator on a 3-year AHRC funded project. Through Beyond Notability: Re-Evaluating Women's Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage in Britain 1870-1950, I'll be able to spend time focusing on women's lives and experiences across various heritage-related fields. It's something I've been doing since I started my PhD, but it hasn't been the sole focus of my research - until now!

I've written the first post on the project's newly established blog - you can read about our first project trip to the Society of Antiquaries of London archives here.

Stay tuned for updates!

Reading Room Notes