Dr Beth Jenkins

Biography

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6124-5154 I am a historian of modern Wales and Britain, with specific research interests in women's education, work and political cultures across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Essex between 2018 and 2021. My first monograph, 'Graduate Women and Work in Wales, 1880-1939: Nationhood, Networks and Community', was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. The book traces the social backgrounds, educational experiences and subsequent lives of women who attended the university colleges in Wales from their inception to the outbreak of the Second World War. Using a sample of 2,000 graduates, the book foregrounds the experience of working-class women and critically assesses the claim of social inclusivity built around education in Wales. It charts changes and continuities in women’s career prospects; explores graduates’ relationship with the communities in which they studied, lived, and worked; and, finally, examines the extensive networks which underpinned their personal and professional lives. Alongside Professor Paul O'Leary and Dr Stephanie Ward, I am currently co-editing a collection of essays on Gender in Modern Welsh History from 1750 to 2000. The volume brings together leading and emerging scholars to demonstrate the value of gender analysis for our understanding of the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Wales.