Dame Olwen Hufton, DBE , FBA , FRHistS (born 1938) is a British historian of early modern Europe and a pioneer of social history and of women's history. She is an expert on early modern, western European comparative socio-cultural history with special emphasis on gender, poverty, social relations, religion and work. Since 2006 she has been a part-time Professorial Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Born in 1938 in Oldham, Lancashire to Joseph and Caroline Hufton, Olwen Hufton was awarded a scholarship at a local grammar school, and became the only council house child in her form. From there she went to University College London (UCL), where she encountered Alfred Cobban, the great revisionist historian of the French Revolution.[ citation needed ]
Hufton's academic career began as a lecturer at the University of Leicester from 1963 to 1966. From Leicester she moved to the University of Reading, where she taught for more than twenty years; and then to Harvard, where from 1987 to 1991 she was the University's first Professor of Modern History and Women's Studies. After four years in America, she returned to Europe in 1991 to become Professor of History and Civilisation at the European University Institute in Florence. Six years later, in 1997, she returned to Britain to become Leverhulme Professor of History at Oxford. She retired in 2003, and is now Fellow Emeritus of Merton College. In 2006 she joined Royal Holloway as a part-time Professorial Research Fellow in the History Department. [1] [2]
Hufton is a Fellow of the British Academy (1998) and of the Royal Historical Society. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2004. [3]
She holds honorary fellowships at UCL and Royal Holloway; and honorary degrees from Reading and Southampton. The University of Glasgow hosts a Hufton Postgraduate Reading Group centred on women's history. [3]
In 2006, she was presented with a Festschrift (edited by Ruth Harris and Lyndal Roper, and published by Oxford University Press) entitled The Art of Survival: Gender and History in Europe, 1450–2000.
Olwen Hufton married Brian Dermot Taunton Murphy (born 27 June 1934) on 3 July 1965; the couple has two daughters. [4]
In Welsh mythology, Olwen is the daughter of the giant Ysbaddaden and cousin of Goreu. She is the heroine of the story Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion. Her father is fated to die if she ever marries, so when Culhwch comes to court her, he is given a series of immensely difficult tasks which he must complete before he can win her hand. With the help of his cousin King Arthur, Culhwch succeeds and the giant dies, allowing Olwen to marry her suitor.
John McManners was a British clergyman and historian of religion who specialized in the history of the church and other aspects of religious life in 18th-century France. He was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 1984. He also served as Fellow and Chaplain of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1964 to 2001.
Lyndal Anne Roper is a historian. She was born in Melbourne, Australia. She works on German history of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and has written a biography of Martin Luther. Her research centres on gender and the Reformation, witchcraft, and visual culture. In 2011 she was appointed to Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford, the first woman and first Australian to hold this position.
Dame Hazel Gillian Genn, DBE, KC (Hon), FBA is a leading authority on civil justice whose work has had a major influence on policy-makers around the world, and is a former Dean of the Faculty of Laws and Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at University College London.
Dame Professor Averil Millicent Cameron, often cited as A. M. Cameron, is a British historian. She writes on Late Antiquity, Classics, and Byzantine Studies. She was Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, and the Warden of Keble College, Oxford, between 1994 and 2010.
Dame Uta Frith is a German-British developmental psychologist and emeritus professor in cognitive development at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL). She pioneered much of the current research into autism and dyslexia. Her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma introduced the cognitive neuroscience of autism. She is credited with creating the Sally–Anne test along with fellow scientists Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen. Among students she has mentored are Tony Attwood, Maggie Snowling, Simon Baron-Cohen and Francesca Happé.
Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft is a British ion channel physiologist. She is Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology at the University of Oxford. She is a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. Her research group has an international reputation for work on insulin secretion, type II diabetes and neonatal diabetes. Her work with Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.
Timothy Charles William Blanning is an English historian who served as Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge from 1992 to 2009.
Irene Joan Thirsk, was a British economic and social historian, specialising in the history of agriculture. She was the leading British early modern agrarian historian of her era, as well as an important social and economic historian. Her work highlighted the regional differences in agricultural practices in England. She also had an interest in food history and local English history, in particular of Hadlow, Kent.
Dame Henrietta Louise Moore, is a British social anthropologist. She is the director of the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity at University College, London, part of the Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment.
Dame Sarah Jane Whatmore is a British geographer. She is a professor of environment and public policy at Oxford University. She is a professorial fellow at Keble College, moving from Linacre College in 2012. She was associate head (research) of the Social Sciences Division of the university from 2014 to 2016, and became pro-vice chancellor (education) of Oxford in January 2017. From 2018 she has been head of the Social Sciences Division.
Historians since the late 20th century have debated how women shared in the French Revolution and what impact it had on French women. Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they were considered "passive" citizens, forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them. That changed dramatically in theory as there seemingly were great advances in feminism. Feminism emerged in Paris as part of a broad demand for social and political reform. These women demanded equality for women and then moved on to a demand for the end of male domination. Their chief vehicle for agitation were pamphlets and women's clubs. The Jacobin element in power abolished all the women's clubs in October 1793 and arrested their leaders. The movement was crushed. Devance explains the decision in terms of the emphasis on masculinity in wartime, Marie Antoinette's bad reputation for feminine interference in state affairs, and traditional male supremacy. A decade later the Napoleonic Code confirmed and perpetuated women's second-class status.
Margot C. Finn, is a British historian and academic, who specialises in Britain and the British colonial world during the long nineteenth century. She has been Professor of Modern British History at the University College, London (UCL) since 2012. Finn was previously the President of the Royal Historical Society and a trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Dame Lucy Stuart Sutherland was an Australian-born British historian and head of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Ruth Harris is an American historian and academic. She has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford since 2011 and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, since 2016. Previously, she was a junior research fellow at St John's College, Oxford, from 1983 to 1987, an associate professor at Smith College from 1987 to 1990, and a fellow of New College, Oxford, between 1990 and 2016. She was awarded the Wolfson History Prize in 2010 for her book The Man on Devil's Island, a biography on Alfred Dreyfus.
Patricia Meria Clavin, is a British-Irish historian and academic, who specialises in international relations, economic crises, and twentieth-century history. She is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Worcester College.
Dame Sarah Elizabeth Worthington, is a British legal scholar, professor at LSE Law School, barrister, and Deputy High Court Judge in the Chancery Division, specialising in company law, commercial law, and equity. From 2011 to 2022, she was the Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge. She is Treasurer of the British Academy and a trustee of the British Museum.
Katharine Ellis, is a British musicologist and academic, specialising in music history. Since 2017, she has been the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. She previously taught at the Open University, at Royal Holloway, University of London and at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, before serving as Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music at the University of Bristol (2013–2017).