Participant Info

First Name
Victoria
Last Name
Dawson
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
Independent Scholar, Freelance Historian
Website URL
Keywords
Britain, 19th century, 20th century, women, working class, community, leisure, rugby league, football, sport
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Victoria’s research interests encompass notions of sex, class, and community in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history, especially the study of women who operated in traditionally masculine arenas. She is also interested in how these issues are displayed culturally, especially in literature and theatre. She completed her PhD, which was on Women and Rugby League: Gender, Class and Community in the North of England, 1880-1970, at De Montfort University in 2017.

Victoria has worked at the University of Hull, De Montfort University and University College London. She was also the Heritage Manager at Rugby League Cares, the charitable arm of the Rugby Football League, where she was responsible for the project management of a £97,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant. This involved cataloguing, preserving, and organising a major new archival acquisition, and the co-curation and writing of a large touring exhibition.

Recent Publications

‘Shares, shirts and soap suds: women and rugby league football in Liverpool, 1934–1950’ in Sport in History (202o)

‘The Sporting Life of the City’ (co-authored with Tony Collins) in Hull: Culture, History, Place (Liverpool University Press, 2017)

‘”Gay motes that people the sunbeams”: Dust, death and degeneration in Dracula’, in Bram Stoker and the Gothic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)

‘”They’ve a girl as a boss…”‘ in Thirteen Inspirations (Scratching Shed Publications, 2014)

Media Coverage
BBC Radio
Country Focus
United Kingdom
Expertise by Geography
United Kingdom
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Emancipation, Family, Gender, Public History, Sports, Women