This Fellowship will provide a major study of the relationship between feminism (broadly defined as the aim for equality between women and men) and non-activist women in Britain since 1945. Existing studies of feminism focus on activists. This research examines how feminism affected women outside activist networks. But it goes further than this, by revealing the importance of these women in constituting and developing feminism. My work will offer a new understanding of the relationship between cultural and political action. It will highlight the importance of the cultural sector as a locus where gender roles were challenged and feminist networks established. This is a conclusion I developed in earlier research on Spare Rib magazine and on cultural participation in Manchester. Since then, as co-Director of Oxford's Women in Humanities (WiH) research centre, I have led interdisciplinary networks on women's cultural production and on their political participation. These highlight theatre as a neglected but important nexus that involves amateur and professional writers and performers; viewers, including those of productions adapted for TV or film; and readers, including schoolchildren studying set texts. Advancing on this, my proposed Fellowship will use a case study of the playwright and screenwriter Shelagh Delaney (1938-2012) to examine how women of her generation challenged socio-cultural norms outside activist networks, and specifically within the cultural sector. Analysing the relationship between cultural and political change will develop my intellectual research leadership in modern history and enhance my contribution to interdisciplinary debates. Building on my first two books, which provided an overview of women's lives across the twentieth century, this Fellowship will use a biographical lens to scrutinize the personal motivations and experiences that provoked women's public actions. I will focus on a pioneering generation of women, those born between c.1935 and 1950. They were the first for whom combining work, family life, sexual and emotional fulfillment was an apparently realizable goal. This research challenges scholarly assumptions that feminism emerged, or was rediscovered, in the 1970s. It questions the existing chronological frameworks of studies of feminism, which suggest that feminism was a series of 'waves' of activism, each of which was generationally specific. My focus on non-activist women demonstrates significant chronological continuities since the early 1960s, the importance of cross-generational relationships, and the importance of cultural participation (both for practitioners and spectators) in shaping political change. My research will be communicated through outputs devised to foster dialogue between academic and non-academic users. These include a major book aimed at academic and non-academic audiences, a theatrical performance, an international symposium bringing together scholars, practitioners and activists, and a radio docudrama written in collaboration with a professional writer. In-depth life history interviews with cultural practitioners and spectators will enrich and inform scholarship. Methodologically, the Fellowship will be informed by a groundbreaking collaboration with the cultural and public sectors. Its findings will be informed by, and some preliminary results communicated through, a major theatrical production undertaken with a professional writer, a community theatre company, a social housing provider and its tenants, and theatre audiences. This will generate new knowledge about the influence that cultural participation has on the creation and dissemination of feminist ideas. Building on my existing experience of fostering interdisciplinary debate within Oxford, this Fellowship will develop my leadership by enabling me to create collaborative partnerships between scholars, cultural practitioners and groups with low rates of educational and cultural participation.

This project will develop and extend the impact activities created by the current AHRC project 'Feminism, culture and women's lives in Britain, c.1945-c.2015'. The study on which this project builds examines in detail the relationship between women's lives and feminism, specifically within the cultural sphere. Findings from this work demonstrate that women across several generations share concerns about their vulnerability within the domestic sphere and housing market. Social housing, in particular, has emerged as a key concern. It has become clear that women have frequently taken a lead in campaigning for better housing provision. In addition, participation in housing campaigns has been a key means by which working-class women have engaged in civic life and affected political change. At the same time, many women expressed frustration at the lack of opportunities for them to express their views on housing, both within and beyond their neighbourhood, or to challenge the agenda and objectives of housing providers and policymakers. This is felt to have become much harder since the privatisation of most social housing. Follow-on Funding will assist women tenants in north-west England to express their views and encourage a wide range of audiences to listen to and learn from their experiences. To achieve this, we will develop the impact activities created by our existing AHRC project. Our project created a theatre group, the Delaney Theatre Group, for women tenants in a Salford tower block. The women used this group to produce and perform a play which drew on their experiences of everyday life since 1945, entitled 'Sweetly Sings the Donkey'. This aspect of our project indicated that cultural participation provides a means for women to articulate their concerns and aspirations in ways that they found fulfilling and which enhanced their emotional wellbeing. The play was performed to c.240 people, including housing workers and policymakers, and audience feedback indicated that the performance had altered spectators' understanding of working-class women's ability to make a positive contribution to civic and cultural life. We propose to use Follow-on Funding to further develop the impact of this activity by touring 'Sweetly Sings the Donkey' to theatres and arts festivals which have expressed interest in hosting a performance. We also propose to use this model of cultural participation to enable a larger group of women to reflect on their housing experiences. The current AHRC project has focused broadly on women's relationship to cultural life and feminism. Follow-on Funding would enable participants to develop cultural activities that focus specifically on their experience of, and concerns about, social housing. This will be achieved by expanding the membership of the established Delaney Theatre Group to include a wider range of women, including clients of our new project partner Salford Women's Aid. By broadening the Theatre Group's activities to include writing, the Group will go on to write and perform a new play focused on women's experiences of social housing, which will draw on oral history testimonies created during the original AHRC project. The original project developed strategies designed to enhance working-class women's cultural and civic participation. These strategies were devised in consultation with project partners and with members of the Shadow Cabinet. Follow-on Funding will enable us to develop more targeted policy recommendations which focus on how to encourage women tenants' participation in the design, maintenance and governance of their neighbourhoods. This is timely given local and national concern over the provision and governance of social housing following the Grenfell Tower disaster in June 2017. Follow-on Funding will allow us to accept invitations to write and present two policy papers on this subject to the City of Salford Mayor and to the Shadow Cabinet.