Lucy McCormick

Thesis Title: The International Woman Suffrage Alliance: individual and interpersonal experiences of international suffragism, 1904-26

The International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) was founded in Berlin in 1904. When it redirected its focus away from suffrage in 1926, it was comprised of thirty national campaigns for female enfranchisement. The resilience of the IWSA throughout the First World War is remarkable; despite being admonished as unpatriotic or even exiled from their own countries, international suffragists determinedly preserved productive and cordial relations with their ‘sisters’ in enemy nations. Their shared pursuit of the franchise emboldened individuals and bolstered transnational friendships which could withstand clashing political ideals. My PhD offers a meaningful contribution to historiographies of feminism, internationalism, and twentieth-century politics by texturising and pluralising historical understandings of the experience of international suffrage activism. My cultural-historical framing privileges individual and interpersonal experiences of international suffrage activism. I begin with an intimate focus on individuals’ sensory, embodied, and emotional experiences. I then zoom out to study relations – sometimes affable, sometimes fraught – between international suffragists, which weathered the First World War, differential rates of enfranchisement, and ideological polarities. This enriched understanding of their friendships and fallouts equips me to examine broader phenomena, namely how the IWSA negotiated the conflicting demands of nationalism and internationalism, imperial feminism and ‘global sisterhood’, and suffragism and feminism.

A case study of Anglo-German relations within the IWSA looks beyond the Anglosphere and engages with a transnational methodology. My analysis promises a richer comprehension of the role suffragists played on the international stage as well as within personal relationships in the midst of a cataclysmic global conflict.

Biography:

Following my BA in History at the University of Warwick and MSt in History at the University of Oxford, I joined the University of Birmingham to begin an MA in Social Research as part of the ESRC's 1+3 programme. I began my PhD in History at Birmingham in 2024. Prior to my PhD, I researched: depictions of women in Victorian medical literature; working-class experiences of pregnancy around the turn of the twentieth century; and emotion and spatiality in the mid-Victorian suffrage campaign. Outside of my studies, I have worked in heritage, education media, and as a tutor. I completed an internship with the Institute of Historical Research, in which I focused on editing and cataloguing in the Bibliography of British and Irish History. I enjoy working as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Birmingham which, in tandem with my Research Assistant role, diversifies my skillset and trains me to become a well-rounded academic.

Public Engagement:

I am enthusiastic about public engagement with History. To this end, I have published blogs about my research with the Women's History Network, OnHistory, and The Gale Review. I have presented my research to academic audiences at conferences as well as to local women's groups. While working as a Visitor Assistant at Middleton Hall and Gardens, I led the History Group to produce an exhibition about women's cycling in Victorian Britain.

Economic & Social History

University of Birmingham

2023 Cohort

Email:

LinkedIn Link opens in a new window

Supervisory Team:

Dr Zoë Thomas

Prof Krista Cowman