Designed with the support of Middle Eastern and British experts, this day programme challenges the current perception of British female travel in the Near & Middle East (1815-1945).
This wide-ranging introduction offers participants the opportunity to map over one hundred years of travel, focusing on Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839); Lady Jane Digby el Mesrab, Um Laban (1807-81); Lady Anne Blunt (1837-1917), co-founder of the Crabbet Arabian Stud; Gertrude Lowthian Bell CBE, El Khatun (1868-1926), first Oriental Secretary of Iraq and co-founder of the Iraq Museum; Dame Freya Stark (1893-1993); Dame Violet Dickson, Um Saud (1896-1991), and Doreen Ingrams (1906-1997), co-founder of the 'Ingrams Peace' in Hadhramaut.
Drawing from personal accounts and with excerpts from private archives, it will map their cultural evolutions through intercultural collaborations with nomadic tribes and regional sociopolitics in the shadows of the Ottoman and British Empires and world wars. Women who picked up their skirts and independently crossed borders and gender boundaries to chart their own accounts of history.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 9 October 2024.