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College News
17 September 2004
19th century student accommodation study wins top history award
A history student from Royal Holloway, University of London has won the Clare Evans Essay Prize: a prestigious award for new researchers in women's history.
Jane Hamlett, 26, is in her third year of a History PhD at Royal Holloway. She entered her essay "'Nicely Feminine, Yet Learned' : male and female student rooms in the late nineteenth century" into the Clare Evans Prize, and was thrilled to hear that she had won. She will now be given the chance to publish her work in the respected journal, Women's History Review.
"I was very pleased to be awarded the prize," said Jane. "It was great that the judges were enthusiastic about my work."
Jane's essay compared male and female university student accommodation in the nineteenth century, including rooms in the Founder's Building at Royal Holloway. Using sources which included the College's extensive archives, she examined photographs of student room interiors from the 1890s. The archives at Royal Holloway contain original Victorian publications, papers, diaries, press cuttings and photographs, some of which are the earliest records relating to the history of higher education for women.
"While I found that the rooms of male and female students reflected very different lifestyles, surprisingly, they often chose to decorate their rooms in a similar way," said Jane. "Men could have lots of ornaments and frilly hangings, while women weren't afraid to display goods that historians have associated with masculinity; one late nineteenth-century female student at Royal Holloway had a crocodile skin hanging in her room!"
The national Clare Evans prize is awarded annually for outstanding essays in the field of Gender and History. The prize is aimed to help women to publish for the first time, giving them the confidence to further develop their ideas. It was set up in memory of Clare Evans, who tragically died of cervical cancer in 1997. Clare delivered many seminars on feminist history, and was instrumental in creating the first feminist historiography course. The essays are considered by a panel of judges set up by the Women's History Network and the Trustees of the Clare Evans Memorial Fund. A £250 prize is awarded by Clare's daughter at the Women's History Network Annual Conference. For further information visit: www.womenshistorynetwork.org/clare_evans_prize.htm
ENDS
For further information
contact Royal Holloway, University of London, Press Office:
Vicky Cousins
Assistant Press & Communications Officer
01784 414480, victoria.cousins@rhul.ac.uk
Christine Long
Press & PR Officer
01784 443967, christine.long@rhul.ac.uk
