ELECTRIFYING WOMEN

Understanding the Long History of Women in Engineering

Welcome to the website for the project Electrifying Women: Understanding the Long History of Women in Engineering.

Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, and based at the University of Leeds, this nine month project started in June 2019 to mark the centenary of the UK’s Women’s Engineering Society (WES).

Our aim was to broaden public awareness of women’s diverse collaborative roles in engineering since the 19th century, showing the many precedents for women’s future roles in engineering. The project drew upon Graeme Gooday’s Domesticating Electricity (2008/2018) for evidence on women in engineering before the First World War.

To support this goal, the Electrifying Women project complemented WES’s centenary activities by running a series of events, such as workshops and talks. This led to the production of a series of resources, including public lectures, videos, volunteer research guidance, blog posts, educational source packs, recommended reading, and creative writing materials. In addition to this we have produced enhanced Wikipedia coverage of past women in engineering.

All these are now available in the linked resources and events pages for anyone anywhere to download, use and share.

These resources were produced in collaboration with our project partners: WES, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the Science Museum, Wikimedia UK and Heritage Open Days. We warmly thank all of them and our very receptive audiences for their great assistance in producing this rich array of resources to celebrate women’s long participation in engineering.

Now that our funding period is over, we won’t be organising any more project activities, but please get in touch with us via email: electrifyingwomen [at] gmail.com or join the Facebook group if you have any suggestions or requests. You can follow us on social media using the links below.

Title image: Women’s Engineering Society visit to a power station, c.1938, courtesy of the IET archives.