Dr Paula Bartley
Dr Paula Bartley, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Warwick.
I have written widely on women’s history.
I have won a number of awards, for example in 2014 I won the Elizabeth Longford research award to help my research on Ellen Wilkinson. In 2016 I won a Society of Authors’ Award and a grant from Vassar College, New York for my research on Labour Women.
I have been interviewed by Women’s Hour, Radio 4, Birmingham radio, the Foreign Pres Association, Australian radio, Mexican tv about my research. In March 2014 I was key-note speaker at the International Women’s Day event at the House of Commons. This can be viewed on parliamentary youtube: The Mighty Atom.In March 2016 I spoke about Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace, available online. I regularly speak conferences and many other different venues. In 2019 I spoke at the Vote 100 Conference organised by the House of Commons and Westminster University; in 2023 as a guest speaker at the Women’s Library, LSE and at the University of Milan Matteoti Conference. I was recently interviewed by Adam Boulton on his Times radio show. In 2025 I was invited back to the University of Milan to give a key note lecture on the first British women politicians. In 2026 I appeared on Standard Issue podcast.
I have been an active member of the Women’s History Network since its formation. I was a former judge and Chair of judges of the Women’s History Network Book prize. In 2022, I was given an Honorary Research Fellowship by the University of Warwick for my work on women’s history.
Books
Trailblazers: the first women elected to government, Polity, 2026.
Women’s Activism in 20th Century Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Labour Women in Power: Cabinet Ministers in the 20th Century, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Queen Victoria, Routledge, 2016.
Ellen Wilkinson: from Red Suffragist to Cabinet Minister, Pluto Press, 2013.
Votes for Women (third edition), Hodder Murray, 2007.
Emmeline Pankhurst, Routledge, 2002.
Prostitution, Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914, Routledge, 2000.
The Changing Role of Women, Hodder and Stoughton, 1996.
Medieval Islam, (co-author) Hodder and Stoughton, 1993.
Sainsbury’s Book of Famous Women and Men, 1992.
Plains Women, (co-author), Cambridge University Press, 1991.
From Workshop to Warfare (co-author, second edition), Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Modern Medicine, (co-author) Edward Arnold, 1989.
Life in the Industrial Revolution, Hodder and Stoughton, 1987.
Under Control, (co-author), Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Between 1983 and 1990 I co-founded and co-edited student books for Cambridge University Press’ highly successful Women in History series: Diane Atkinson’s Votes for Women, Hilary Bourdillon’s Women as Healers, Angela John’s Coalmining Women,Caroline Lang’s Keep Smiling Through, Cathy Porter’s Women in Revolutionary Russia,Gill Thomas’s, Life on All Fronts, and Rosina Visram’s, Women in India and Pakistan.
Articles in journals and chapters in books
No one wants to talk about the dark side of the suffragettes, The Telegraph, July 18th 2026
Campaigning for Women’s Rights in Britain, Donne in Europa nel primo Novecento, ed Michela Minesso, Franco Angeli, 2025.
Entries on ‘Madeline Symons’ and ‘Dorothy Mary Elliot’, DNB, 2023.
‘Barbara Castle’ in Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas, A History of Women in 100 Objects, The History Press, 2019.
Contributor to Voice and Vote, Celebrating 100 Years of Votes for Women, Regal Press (a parliamentary publication), 2018.
‘Margaret Bondfield’ and ‘Ellen Wilkinson’ in Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas, Hidden Heroines, Robert Hale, 2018.
‘‘Ellen Wilkinson and Home Security’, The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Memories, (ed. Prof Maggie Andrews and Dr Janis Lomas), Palgrave, 2013.
‘Prostitution’, (co-author) Companion to Women’s Historical Writing, (ed Mary Spongberg et al) Palgrave, 2005.
‘Emmeline Pankhurst’, History Today, March 2003.
‘Votes for Women’, Years of Expansion, (ed Michael Scott-Baumann), Hodder and Stoughton, 2002.
‘Prostitution and Mental Illness’, New Perspective, 2001
‘Prostitution’(co-author), Women in Twentieth-Century Britain, (ed Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska), Longman, 2001.
‘Moral Regeneration” Women and the Civic Gospel in Birmingham, 1870-1914’, Midland History, 2000.
‘Suffragettes, Class and Pit-Brow Women’, History Review, December 1999.
‘Reforming Women: Prostitution in Victorian Birmingham’, Birmingham Historian, Number 12, 1999.
‘Preventing Prostitution: The Ladies’ Association for the Care and Protection of Young Girls in Birmingham, 1887-1914’, Women’s History Review, 1998.
’Women’s Past’, Secondary Issues, ILEA, 1986.
‘London Women’s History Walk: Southwark’, South London Record, 1985.
I have also written an MA module for the Open University on Women since the First World War, regularly write book reviews for academic journals, contribute blogs on women’s history and speak on my research at various venues.