Dr Bec Wonders
I am a Research Associate in the Women’s Equality and Inequality Research Programme (WEIR) at the University of Oxford specialising in second wave feminist history and feminist networks. I am also a freelance illustrator, typesetter and artist. My work can be found on my personal website.
My research investigates women's networks, feminist political alliances, networked sisterhoods and complicated female friendships with particular emphasis on the British Women's Liberation Movement (1970-1990) as well as contemporary feminist networks. I am interested in how women spin, link and weave the web of their informal but transformative female connections in all their complexity and plurality.
Research Interests
- Women's Networks and Networking
- Feminist Conflict, Female Friendship and Complicated Sisterhood
- Feminist Periodicals, Letters to the Editor, Epistolary Communication
- The Women's Liberation Movement, Second Wave Feminism
I am excited by the possibility of strengthening intergenerational networks between women through historical research, such as by conducting oral history interviews or by undertaking feminist archival record-keeping. I also deal with divisions and friendships, both political and interpersonal, between women. I understand conflict and negotiations between feminists as evidence of an active and open networked political feminist movement that requires networked plurality for momentum and growth. I am also fascinated by slow and woman-controlled communication, such as serialised letter-writing in feminist periodicals, and how the medium of communication influences its content and rhetoric.
I founded the free online feminist archive Frauenkultur in 2020 and I co-founded the Vancouver Women's Library in 2017. Both initiatives were inspired by the endurance of first and second wave feminist records and documents, as well as the political importance of continuing their circulation across generations of women.
You can follow me on my Personal Website, and on Twitter @wondersbec
