The Lives and Afterlives of Women Activists on the World Stage

Book Launch

How did nineteenth-century women advocate for social change and how has their activism been remembered? Exploring these questions, this event brings together scholars and organisers for a roundtable discussion of historic women’s activist initiatives and their cultural afterlives in the contemporary world.

The event launches the recent publication of three monographs on this theme by researchers affiliated with Utrecht University:

Women’s Activism in the Transatlantic Consumers’ Leagues, 1885–1920 by Flore Janssen (Edinburgh University Press, 2024, paperback edition 2025)

Slavery in the International Women’s Movement, 1832−1914: Memory Work and the Legacy of Abolitionism by Sophie van den Elzen (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

Remembering Revolutionary Women: The Cultural Afterlives of Louise Michel, Emma Goldman and Sylvia Pankhurst by Clara Vlessing (De Gruyter Brill, 2026).

The authors of these works will be joined in a roundtable discussion by Berteke Waaldijk, professor emerita of Gender Studies at UU, and Onessa Novak from the feminist institute Atria.

You are cordially invited to join us for discussion, drinks and snacks.