International Women's Day 2025

This year's theme for International Women’s Day is ‘accelerate action’ and in the library we are celebrating by showcasing prize winning women who have accelerated action in their fields. From prize winning fiction such as Orbital by Samantha Harvey to the winner of the Wolfson History Prize, Shadows at Noon by Joya Chatterji. Browse our collection and be inspired. 

An inspiration last week, was attending the IWD conference organised by the Women’s Staff network, who have a range of events this month. The generosity of the speakers and attendees in sharing their stories and experiences made for an inspiring and motivating day.  

Throughout the day speakers shared their journeys including the challenges they faced and how they overcame them. The importance of knowing your craft, having a support network, authenticity, taking chances and self-belief were some of the common themes of their success. Celebrating these success and achievements provides some positivity against the ongoing systematic barriers and biases facing women. As noted on the IWD website it will be another five generations before we see gender parity. 

A highlight of the day was hearing directly from the talented researchers at the university who provided a valuable insight into the varied routes to research.

• Deborah Littley presented on her use of Craftivism as a research technique, where she asked women to sew dolls to represent themselves with biographical details on the back about their experiences with higher education, which potentially had her participants opening up more than some traditional research methods might.
• Melania Law demonstrated her use of Poetic Inquiry, where she worked with her participants to turn the transcripts of their conversations into found poems to highlight the most important aspects of their discussions together.
• Nysha Chantel, gave a fun and insightful talk titled “Beyonce Made Me Do It”, where she discussed her “World tour of Research Conferences” inspired by Beyonce’s World Tour and looked back over the impact it had on her research and career. Her core message that ran throughout her talk was ‘Put yourself out there and apply for those opportunities because the worse they can do is say no’.  She is also one of the speakers at the upcoming 2025 TED^x Wolverhampton event.

Many thanks to all involved for an inspiring day and demonstrating the power of sharing stories.