Wendy Webster
Emeritus Professor
Department of Humanities
Harris Building Room 150, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE
+44 (0)1772 893054
wwebster@uclan.ac.uk
Biographical Notes / Qualifications
Wendy Webster is Professor of Contemporary British history and works particularly on questions of gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, imperialism and national identity. She welcomes enquiries from research students interested in exploring any of these questions, or the history of post-war British film.
Her major recent project, funded by research leave from the AHRB, was on the impact of loss of empire on British and English culture and identity. Published as Englishness and Empire 1939-1965 (Oxford University Press, 2005), it won the prize for the best work in the field of media and history from the International Association for Media and History in 2006. The judges commended Englishness and Empire as ‘an engaging history of the relationship between the British people and their Empire during the years of transformation, 1939-65, as seen through the prism of the media … It is an excellent example of the value of media evidence for historians and will remain a standard text for years to come’.
Wendy Webster’s current project on ‘Englishness and Europe, 1940-1973’ has been supported by a 2-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and she will be developing it further as a Visiting Fellow at Australian National University in 2010. It explores the significance of Europe to English identity in the period from Dunkirk to Britain's entry into the EEC.
External Affiliations / Roles
Member, editorial board, Women’s History Review - 1998-present
Reviews Editor, Women’s History Review - 1998-present
Member, Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College
2006-present
Grants
£9,140: Grant for the employment of a Research Assistant to work on the oral history of black women in Britain, 1945-1964, University of Central Lancashire, 1994.
£11,795: Award for Research Leave, Arts and Humanities Research Board, 2001: Lowering the Flag: Gender, 'Race' and Empire in Britain 1945-1968.
£700: British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, British World Conference II, University of Calgary, 2003.
£600: British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, British World Conference III, University of Melbourne, 2004.
£400: British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, Projections of Race and Ethnicity: National Identities and Global Networks Conference, University of Cincinnati, 2005.
£19,981: Leverhulme two-year Research Fellowship, 2006: Englishness and Europe, 1940-1973
Awards
Englishness and Empire was awarded the International Association for Media and History prize for best contribution to the field of media and history, 2005-6.
Selected Publications
Please click on the images below for descriptions and reviews of Wendy Webster’s books:
PUBLICATIONS SINCE 2000
Books
2005 Englishness and Empire, 1939-1965, viii + 253pp. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Edited collections
2008 With Louise Ryan, Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-war Britain (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008).
Book chapters and journal articles
2009 ‘Shorn Women, Rubble Women and Military Heroes: Gender, National Identity and the Second World War in Britain, France and Germany, 1944-1948’ in Laura Rorato and Anna Saunders, eds., The Essence and the Margin: National Identities and Collective Memories in Contemporary European Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009).
2008 ‘Britain and the Refugees of Europe, 1939-1950’ in Louise Ryan and Wendy Webster, eds., Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Postwar Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 35-51.
2007 ‘Rose-tinted Blighty: Gender and Genre in Land Girls’ in Michael Paris, ed., Repicturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 12 –25.
2006 'Transnational Journeys and Domestic Histories', Journal of Social History, vol 39, no. 3, Spring 2006, pp. 651-666.
2005 'Immigration and Racism', in Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (eds), Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939-2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 93-109.
2005 'The Empire Answers: Imperial Identity on Radio and Film', in Phillip Buckner and Doug Francis (eds), Rediscovering the British World (Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2005), pp. 321-339.
2003 ‘Domesticating the Frontier: Gender, Empire and Adventure Landscapes in British Cinema, 1945-59’, Gender and History, vol. 15, no. 1, April 2003, pp. 85-107.
2003 'Reconstructing Boundaries: Gender, War and Empire in British Cinema, 1945-50', Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, vol. 23, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 43-57.
2003 'The Monarch, the Media and the Monkey', BBC History Magazine, June 2003.
2003 ‘The African-Caribbean Community in Britain’, Reader’s Guide to British History (London, Routledge, 2003), pp. 25-7.
2001 ‘Race, Ethnicity and National identity’, in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (ed), Women in Twentieth Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (Longman), pp. 292-306.
2001 ‘‘There’ll Always be an England: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948-68’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, October 2001, ISSN 0021-9371, pp. 557-584. Reprinted in Simon Faulkner and Anandi Ramamurphy (eds), Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain (London, Ashgate, 2006), pp.189-214. Also reprinted in Stephen Howe, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2007).
2001 'Representing Nation: Women, Obituaries and National Biography, in Ann-Marie Gallagher et al., (eds), Re-presenting the Past: Women and History (London, Longman, 2001), pp. 124-141
2001 ‘Interviews’, in Margaretta Jolly (ed), Encyclopedia of Life-Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), pp. 471-472.
2001 'Sound Recording and Life Writing', in Margaretta Jolly (ed), Encyclopedia of Life-Writing: Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), pp. 822-824.
2000 ‘Defining Boundaries: European Volunteer Worker Women in Britain and Narratives of Community’, Women’s History Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 2000, pp. 257-276.
Special issue on ‘Borders and Frontiers’.
2000 ‘Border Crossings: Enforced Displacement and Twentieth-Century History’, Women’s History Review, vol. 9, no. 4, 2000, pp. 825-833.
FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
‘ “Europe Against the Germans”: The British Resistance Narrative, 1938-50’, forthcoming in Journal of British Studies, October 2009.
‘Home, Colonial and Foreign: Europe and Empire in Twentieth-century Britain’, forthcoming in History Compass, 2009.
‘The Empire Comes Home: Commonwealth Migration to Britain’ in Andrew Thompson, ed., Britain’s Experience of Empire during the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2009).
PAPERS PRESENTED TO CONFERENCES SINCE 2000
‘There’ll Always be an England: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration 1948-68’, paper to Relocating Britishness Conference, University of Central Lancashire, June 2000.
‘Gender, Empire and Narratives of Nation, 1948-1968’, invited paper to ‘Aspects of Gender in Contemporary Britain’ Conference, Institute of Contemporary British History, July 2000.
‘‘Home’ and ‘Away’: Gender, Empire and Adventure in Britain, 1935-59’, invited paper, funded by Royal Geographical Society, to Geographies of Home Conference, University of London, November 2000.
‘A Man’s Story?: Tenzing Norgay and the Pioneering Woman in Memories of Empire, 1953-2000’, invited paper to ‘Feminist Perspectives on the History of Masculinity’ Workshop, Manchester Metropolitan University, June 2001
‘Gender, War and Empire in British Cinema, 1945-50’, paper funded by British Council to ‘Changing Identities in Film and Television’ Conference, International Association for Media and History, University of Leipzig, July 2001
‘Heroines, Traitors and Good Wives: Gender and the Second World War in Film, 1945-50’, invited paper, funded by Manchester University, to ‘Performing the Second World War: Gender, Memory and Genre’ Workshop, Manchester University, September 2001
‘Domesticating the Frontier: Gender and Empire in Britain, 1953-59’, invited paper, funded by Institute of Historical Research, to Institute of Historical Research Seminar, London, October 2001.
‘After Everest: Gender, Empire and the Adventure Landscape, 1953-1959’, contribution to panel presentation on ‘Circulating Anxieties: Gender, Class and Imperial Identities, 1850-1960’, North American Conference on British Studies, Toronto, November 2001
‘Gender and Empire’, invited paper as panelist in ‘Metropolitan Culture and Imperial Decline’ Symposium organized jointly by the Institute of Contemporary British History and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, December 2001
'Coronation Britain: Modernity and Tradition', invited paper to Post-imperial Britain Conference, Institute of Contemporary British History, July 2002.
‘The Empire Answers: Imperial Identity on Radio and Film, 1939-1945’, invited paper, funded by British Academy, to British World II Conference, University of
Calgary, Alberta, July 2003.
'Gender, Migration and Identity: Caribbean Women's Narratives and Post-war British History', invited paper to Caribbean Research Seminar in the North, University of Central Lancashire, October 2002.
'Englishness, Empire and Narratives of World War II', invited plenary address to Social History Conference, University of Rouen, January 2004.
'Gender, Empire and Narratives of World War II: Remaking Britishness or Englishness?' invited plenary address, funded by Archif Menywod Cymru /Women's Archive of Wales and Llafur: the Welsh People's History Society, to Re-presenting the British Past: Women, Gender and History in the British Isles Conference, University of Glamorgan, April 2004.
'Late Imperial Masculinity: Winston Churchill's Funeral and Romances of Manliness', paper, funded by British Academy, to British World III Conference, University of Melbourne, July 2004.
'Winston Churchill and the Romance of Manliness', invited paper, funded by the Institute of Historical Research, to Reconfiguring the British Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London, October 2004.
'Transnational Journeys and a Place Called Home', invited paper funded by Journal of Social History to The Future of Social History Conference, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, October 2004.
‘Peace-time Identities: Imagery of the Legacy of War in Europe in British and US film and Newsreel, 1945-50', paper funded by the British Academy to Projections of Race and Ethnicity Conference, University of Cincinnati, July 2005.
‘Englishness and Empire’, invited plenary lecture, British Studies at Oxford Summer School, St. John’s College Oxford, August 2005.
‘War, Gender and Memory: Victors and Vanquished in World War II’, paper to European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam, March 2006.
‘Refugee Histories: Gender, National Identity and the Second World War’, paper to Social History Society Conference, Reading University, March 2006.
‘Shorn Women, Rubble Women and Military Heroes: Sex and Gender in Representations of the Second World War in Britain, France and Germany, 1944-1948’, paper to Image and Identity in Contemporary Europe Conference, Bangor University, September 2006.
‘Film and British National Identity’, invited lecture to Fulbright Scholars Orientation Programme, London, September 2006.
‘British Myths of the Resistance, 1938-1948’ invited paper, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, to European Identity 1939-1952 Symposium, Aarhus University, Denmark, January 2007.
‘Good Europeans: British Narratives of Resistance, 1942-48’, paper to Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century Conference, London, July 2007.
‘British Media and the End of Empire’, invited paper to Media and Imperialism Conference, Amsterdam University, July 2007.
‘Witnessing the Nazi Legacy: Britain and the Sufferings of Europe, 1945-60’, invited paper to European Identity and the Impact of the Second World War Conference, Amsterdam University, December 2007.
‘After the Nazis: British Narratives of Germany and Europe, 1945-65’, invited paper to Modern British and Irish History Seminar, Edinburgh University, March 2008.
‘Manliness, Militarism and Myth-making: Memories of Empire and the Second World War in Britain’, invited paper to Public Memories of Empire and the Legacies of Colonialism in Britain and France Workshop, Leeds University, June 2008.
‘The “People’s Empire” and the “People’s Resistance”: British Wartime Propaganda on Empire and Europe’, invited paper to Justifying War Conference, Kent University, July 2008.
Invited Panellist on discussion of ‘Lean’s Empire’, British Film Institute, London, August 2008.
Invited Panellist on debate about ‘Contemporary Romania in the European Context’, Liverpool European Capital of Culture event organised by the Romanian Cultural Centre, November 2008.
