Celebrating International Women's Day 2017

InternationalWomensDay-landscape

Wednesday 8 March is International Women's Day. Everyone is welcome to attend the celebratory events at the University.

International Women's Day 2017 Programme

Share your day event #UoBWomen: Wednesday 8 March 

Please join the conversation by sharing your day using #UoBWomen. We want to hear from University of Birmingham women around the world – politicians, cancer researchers, students, physicists, full-time carers, businesswomen and everything in between. We’ll have specific questions and topics through the day, but we would like to find out your thoughts and activities as well. You can join in as often or as little as you like throughout the day – we’d just love to hear from as many Birmingham women as possible.

Making Space: Celebrating Women at the University of Birmingham

Follow artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley as she captures intriguing images that give us a glimpse into the lives of women past and present around campus. ‘Making Space’ celebrates the achievements of inspiring women from the University of Birmingham, creates a positive platform for female figures today and considers what we need to achieve in order to make a better space for women on campus and beyond. 

Encounters with Harriet Martineau: Wednesday 8 March (13:00 - 14:00)

A talk by Stuart Hobday, biographer of Harriet Martineau. Harriet Martineau was a radical C19th writer and campaigner. She became famous in 1830s London for writing about fair economics in a popular way and after visiting America became an outspoken voice against slavery. She went onto become the world's first woman journalist and influenced the development of the social sciences. Stuart Hobday will look at the personal side of Martineau's life and her influence on other Victorian luminaries such as Charles Darwin and George Eliot

The Amazing Lady Bible Hunters, Sisters of Sinai, Wednesday 8 March (17:00 - 18:00)

A talk by Professor Janet Soskice, author of 'The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels.' In 1892 twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson made the incredible discovery of the Codex Syriac Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the gospel from the fourth century and the oldest copy of the gospels in Syriac. Born in Ayrshire in 1843, the daughters of Scottish Presbyterians, as women they were not able to attend a British university. However the sisters undertook private tuition and became expert in ancient languages including Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac. Encouraged by their friend James Rendel Harris they visited St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where they made their astonishing discovery. 

This talk accompanies the Cadbury Research Library 'Excavating Empire' exhibition of letters and photographs from the archives of Agnes and Margaret.