Doing Women’s Screen and Media Histories 8

Archiving and Curating Women’s Media Histories: Feminist Approaches, Practices, Possibilities

Weds 16th June – Friday 18th June, 2027

University of Exeter, UK

We are pleased to announce that the 8th iteration of the Women’s Film and Television History Network UK and Ireland conference will take place between the 16th and 18th June, 2027, at the University of Exeter, UK:

https://womensscreenwork.exeter.ac.uk/events/conference/

A key theme of the conference will be ‘Archiving and Curating Women’s Media Histories: Feminist Approaches, Practices and Possibilities’. The theme will foreground the importance of archivists and curators in the dynamic processes of doing women’s media histories. The archival turn in women’s media histories has produced a rich tradition of new work and has innovated enabling methodologies. This conference seeks to foster further dialogue among archival researchers, professional archivists, and curators in media heritage collections to better understand how the archival discovery and recovery of feminist historiography is always intertwined with archival and curatorial labour, practices, and processes. The conference aims to explore feminist approaches to archival and curatorial practice, and to acknowledge the importance of archivists and curators in the shared project of Doing Women’s Media Histories, but we will also welcome papers on feminist media histories outside of the key theme. Our definition of women is inclusive.

Building on the success of the 7th conference at the University of Lincoln in 2025, this three-day event will again be in person and welcome international scholars, archivists, curators, and practitioners to foster conversations and collaborations within and beyond the panels.

The conference is supported by the AHRC-funded Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible project, hosted by the project team, and organised by Helen M Hanson, Shelley Cobb and Lisa Smithstead.

The Call for Papers will be circulated in August 2026.

Please send any enquiries to: WomensScreenWork@exeter.ac.uk