Hannah Speed

Participation in the Scottish women’s suffrage campaign had a dramatic impact on participants’ sense of self. This study for the first time uses life-writing from a broad range of participants to trace their experiences of campaigning, the formation and evolution of their political subjectivities, and how these in turn shaped the movement and its legacy. It uses an innovative, interdisciplinary methodology drawn from history and literary criticism to analyse life-writing forms, structures, and language. The project opens new directions in suffrage history by bringing together under-used sources to re-evaluate the campaign’s short- and long-term impact and rebalance the London-focused historiography.