A Look into the Trans Archive

Watch event again now

This event took place on 10 November 2020

Watch the video

A Look into the Trans Archive

Watch event again now

This event took place on 10 November 2020

This discussion illuminates and contextualises some of the trans and gender diverse stories featured in the exhibition Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights.

Find out about -

  • Ground-breaking feminist magazine Urania which celebrated the lives of sex rebels and gender outlaws in the early 20th century
  • The 1930s media fascination with people described as ‘medical curiosities’ or sexually ‘anti-typical’ who today would be likely to identify as intersex or transgender
  • The legal struggles which led to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act
  • The striking visual iconography of contemporary non-binary artist of colour Travis Alabanza.

Our expert panel will show that trans people, in various forms and often with different names to those used today, have always been part of feminist history and the struggle for women’s rights, and will continue to be so in the future.

This event was part of Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights, a UK-wide exhibition by the British Library and public libraries.

Speakers

D-M Withers

Academic and Curator

D-M Withers is currently Research Fellow on the Business of Women's Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing based at the British Library and part of the curatorial team for Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights.

Headshot of D-M Withers

Clare Tebbutt

Academic

Clare Tebbutt is Assistant Professor in Gender and Women's Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

Headshot of Clare Tebbutt

Ann Heilmann

Academic

Ann Heilmann is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University

Headshot of Ann Heilmann

Christine Burns MBE

Activist

Christine Burns MBE is a political activist best known for her work with Press for Change and as an internationally-recognised health adviser.

Headshot of Christine Burns MBE

Adrian Kane-Galbraith

Researcher and Academic

Adrian Kane-Galbraith is a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington, Seattle. His dissertation, “Public Bodies: ‘Sex Change’ and the State in Postwar Britain,” uses the history of legal and medical gender transition as a lens through which to examine shifting relationships between British citizens and the state between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s.

Headshot of Adrian Kane-Galbraith