Dr Julia Bush

I taught in London schools and at Hertfordshire College of Higher Education before moving to Northampton in 1986. Over the past twenty years I have held various posts within the University, as well as continuing to contribute to adult education in the wider community. As Head of the School of Social Studies and Dean of Faculty, I was responsible for the academic management of staff and courses; more recently, I have resumed research and teaching as a half-time Senior Lecturer in History. Much of the rest of my time is devoted to community history activities, especially through work with the Northamptonshire Black History Association. I am co-editor of the quarterly Northamptonshire Black History Association Newsletter.

I am currently teaching in areas which relate closely to my research: first-year modules in Women's History, Black British History, African History and Heritage Studies.

I am co-supervising a PhD project on Caribbean consumers in Northamptonshire.

I am currently researching and writing in Victorian and Edwardian Women's History and local Black History. My book Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (2000) brought together my interests in women and in the history of the British Empire. Earlier research on the home front in East London during the First World War combined research on the origins of the Labour Party with my ongoing enthusiasm for histories of migration and settlement. Over the past few years, I have been researching the female opposition to women's suffrage in Britain. Imperialist ladies played a leading part in this largely-forgotten opposition movement, and my book Women Against the Vote (2008) provided fresh perspectives on organised anti-suffragism and other aspects of female conservatism. Alongside my academic research, I have contributed to a community-based research project designed to map the expansion of the Black and Asian presence in Northamptonshire (Sharing the Past: Northamptonshire Black History, 2008) .

During 2009 I am editing a second book with Northamptonshire Black History Association, based on Special Studies written by University evening class students. I am also writing an article on the Quaker anti-suffragist Caroline Stephen, and preparing papers on Community History and on Slavery and Anti-Slavery in Northamptonshire.

Other publications

Books

• Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (Leicester University Press, 2000)
• Women Against the Vote. Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2007)
• Sharing the Past: Northamptonshire Black History (NBHA, 2008)

Articles and Book Chapters

• 'British Women's Imperial Politics and the South African War, 1899-1902', Women's History Notebooks 7, 2(2000)
• 'Ladylike Lives? Upper Class Women's Autobiographies and the Politics of Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain', Literature and History, 10, 2 (2000)
• 'British Women's Anti-Suffragism and the Forward Policy 1908-14', Women's History Review, 11, 3 (2000)
• 'Ellen Joyce', entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• 'Special strengths for their own special duties: women, higher education and gender conservatism in late Victorian Britain', History of Education, 34, 4(2005)
• 'The National Union of Women Workers and women's suffrage', in M.Boussahba-Bravard (ed.) Suffrage Outside Suffragism (Palgrave, 2007)
• 'The National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage', entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2007)