Oral history has been welcomed as a method of choice for feminists. Yet how should we listen to the intimate voices of feminist activists and what lessons can we learn from the history of women’s movements? Join us for debate with Professor Margaretta Jolly, drawing on her new book Sisterhood and After: An Oral History of the UK Women’s Liberation Movement, 1968-present, in which she uncovers personal stories of feminists across the regions, nations, classes and ethnicities of the UK. Interrogating the politics of experience and everyday lives in momentous times, she also invites us to celebrate oral history’s unique music, memory-making and political potential.

Margaretta Jolly is based at the University of Sussex in England, where she is Professor of Cultural Studies and director of the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research. She is the editor of The Encyclopedia of Life Writing (2001) and author of In Love and Struggle: Letters in Contemporary Feminism (2008), for which she won the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association UK Book Prize. Working with the British Library, Margaretta directed Sisterhood and After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She currently leads The Business of Women’s Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing, again partnered with the British Library.