History Hub

HistoryHub

Connecting past and present

Menu

On 4 September 2020 a group of historians, writers and educators from across the world came together online to talk about some of the most inspirational women warriors of the last few centuries.

Dr Matilda Greig

UCD Centre for War Studies

Videos: Wonder Women & Rebel Girls

Free online workshop tells women warriors’ stories

On 4 September 2020 a group of historians, writers and educators from across the world will meet online to talk about some of the most inspirational women warriors of the last few centuries – and the stories we tell about them – in a free online workshop open to the public.

Meeting a female cavalry officer among the ranks of his army was a bit of a surprise for Napoleon, one sunny day in 1806. ‘What!’ he is reported to have exclaimed, ‘You are a woman?’

Today, more than two hundred years later, it shouldn’t be such a surprise: women now serve in combat roles in many armies and female superhero-warriors top the billing in blockbuster Hollywood films, though the battle for acceptance and equal representation carries on.

The online event, ‘Wonder Women & Rebel Girls: Women Warriors in the Media, 1800 to today’, is organised by Dr Matilda Greig from University College Dublin, and opens with a talk by Dr Emma Butcher, recently featured on BBC 2’s ‘Being the Brontës’, BBC Radio 3, and Dan Snow’s History Hit.

The videos of conference papers are now available to watch on History Hub’s Youtube channel. Topics include everything from Furiosa to the French Resistance, Indigenous histories and heavy metal bands. 

Keynote

'War is an Ecstasy, Risk is Wild’: Girls Writing War in the Nineteenth Century by Dr Emma Butcher (Edge Hill University)

Play Video

Panel 1: Gender and Sexuality

Playlist

3 Videos
Current video
Current video

‘Female’ military masculinities: gender non-conforming women warriors and beyond
Dr Catherine Baker (University of Hull)

Panel 2: Nationalism and Propaganda

Playlist

3 Videos
Current video
Current video

French Invasion Heroines and their Afterlives
Professor Alison Fell (University of Leeds)

Panel 3: Activism and Exclusion

Playlist

3 Videos
Current video
Current video

Guerrilla Girls, Wonder Women, and Menstruating Mothers: Iconographies of IRA Women in Armagh Gaol, 1970-1980
Samantha Haddad (New York University)

Full details at: wonderwomenworkshop.wordpress.com

Latest Podcasts

Explore more

Military Communities’ Medical Welfare and Care History Conference Series

The Military Welfare History Network provides a networking and dissemination platform for scholars who are research active in military welfare history.

Thanks to the generous funding of the Wellcome Trust, through the Society for the Social History of Medicine, in 2025-26 the MWHN ran a three-part series of events.

Entitled the ‘The Military Communities’ Medical Welfare and Care History Conference Series’, this series comprised three accessible hybrid network events, which took place in the UK and online (via Zoom) over the course of the twenty-four months of the award. All of which focused on the burgeoning ‘perspective’ of military welfare history; defined as the welfare, care and medical provisions afforded to service personnel, their families and other dependents.

Attendees at the Military Welfare History Conference.

Keynotes from the Military Welfare History Network 2023 Conference

The first in-person meeting of the Military Welfare History Network took place in Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin on 7 July 2023. The event, which was co-ordinated by Dr Paul Huddie, comprised two keynotes and four panels, totalling 14 speakers.

Conference keynotes by Dr Matthew Neufeld (University of Saskatchewan) and Dr Ke-Chin Hsia (Indiana University Bloomington) were recorded and are now available to podcast.

Military Welfare History Network 2024 Conference

The Military Welfare History Network provides a networking and dissemination platform for scholars who are research active in military welfare history.

In 2024 the Military Welfare History Network (MWHN) hosted its third international conference at the University of Leeds on 20 and 21 June. Led by Prof Jessica Meyer, the organising team hosted a two-day event at Leeds on the theme of ‘Economies of Military Welfare: conversations between past and present’. The conference was generously supported by the University of Leeds and the Economic History Society. Two papers recorded at the conference are now available to podcast.

Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference Podcasts

Since 2011, researchers from a range of disciplines including History, Irish, English, Archaeology and Art History, have presented papers at Tudor and Stuart Ireland conferences. History Hub, in association with Real Smart Media, has produced more than 320 podcasts from these conferences.

Scroll to Top