Third-year Lily-Ann Lofty, has been speaking at a history conference ‘From Margins to Centre? An undergraduate conference on marginalised histories' at the University of York.
In February I was invited to present a paper at the University of York, titled ‘From Margins to Centre? An undergraduate conference on marginalised histories.’ The conference focused on the history of women, BME history, the history of the LGBTQ+ community and the history of disability. I wrote the paper for my Independent Essay during my second year on the centenary of the Representation of the People Act in 1918 which was supervised by Dr Alex Windscheffel.
My paper focused on the legacy of activism that middle class women developed in the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century during the height of the abolition of slavery movement. Throughout the project I traced the lives of women who were active during the abolition of slavery but also were prominent activists for female suffrage. This collection of women largely showed how the skills they gained in political literature, petitioning and confidence from the abolition of slavery, aided them in protesting for rights for women. The other papers were extremely inspiring and represented the wonderful research that is being achieved at undergraduate level to push marginalised histories above the surface. Particularly the papers on transgender history were fascinating and represented modern, innovative histories that are being researched by a new generation of historians.
When the call for papers was released, I instantly wanted to submit an abstract. Undergraduate conferences are very common in the US, but undergraduates in the UK are rarely given the opportunity to present at professional, academic conferences. The opportunity to network with other students and historians, on the other side of the country to Royal Holloway, was a thought-provoking and extremely supportive experience. After each panel the audience had an opportunity to ask questions to individual presenters. To receive both positive feedback and constructive criticism in an open and public environment (as opposed to on an assignment) was very new to me but was really beneficial in helping me decide to continue with postgraduate study in September. During my final year I have specialised in British imperial, missionary history and so to discuss my research with the keynote speaker, Dr Catherine Hall, was wonderful. Ultimately, I came away from the conference thinking very consciously about the history I wanted to research and write and that I wasn’t quite finished at undergraduate level.
