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Registration is open for a 24-hour long conference-a-thon to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) on 8 March 2025. The event will feature the work of over sixty photography scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts in a free, online, global, 24-hour symposium dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to the medium of photography from photography’s announcement in 1839 to contemporary practitioners in 2024. This unique event aims to highlight the diverse and impactful work of women and female-identifying photographers, and those working with photography, across many different cultures and time zones.

The conference-a-thon had been put together by scholars Dr Rose Teanby from the UK and Dr Kris Belden-Adams of University of Mississippi. It features speakers from across the globe including New Zealand and Australia, Asia, Europe and the UK, Canada, North and South America, following IWD as it moves through the Earth's time zones. All time zones enter International Women’s Day, 8 March, from 0800-1100 (UTC).

Split into three sections, the 15-minute papers, plus two longer keynotes, look at different themes and techniques through the lens of women from photography's announcement in 1839, others focus on individual women photographers from the C19th, C20th and C21st centuries, soem take a geographical approach, and other papers provide an opportunity to hear from contemporary women photographers, artists and practitioners. The keynotes are being delivered by South African/UK-based photographer Jillian Edelstein who will discuss her own practice and what photography means to her; and Dr. Katherine Manthorne who will discuss Civil War era New Yorkers. 

All the speakers will be recorded and the rceordings will be made available to registrants only, allowing them to catch up with any talks that they might miss. 

The programme, paper abstracts and speaker biographies are all available to review. 

Take a look at the full programme and register here: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/

Lydia Heeley has been appointed the Bern and Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, and will start in post on 2 October 2024. She replaces the inaugural curator Phillip Roberts who was appointed in 2022 and left earlier this year. The post was advertised in May. 

Lydia brings curatorial experience from her most recent post as Assistant Curator, Photography, at the museums of St Andrews University a role she has held since December 2022. Prior to this she was Digitisation Officer responsible for 3D and 2D digitisation at the museum, and has been at the university in various part-time and voluntary roles, including work on the James Valentine collection and on the St Andrews Photography Festival.

Her MPhil thesis which was undertaken at St Andrews, supervised by Luke Gartlan was titled Scottish documentary photography and the archive: George M. Cowie, Franki Raffles and Document Scotland in the University of St Andrews Photographic Collection. The first major retrospective of Raffles' work was shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and remains on view until 16 March 2025. Lydia blogged about her work on the exhibition. 

The curatorial post at the Bodleian was first announced in 2021 with the objective of caring for, and developing, the libraries' growing photography collections. It was realised through a 'transformational' gift of £2 million from The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. The endowment accompanies the Foundation's donation of the archive of renowned American portrait photographer and businessman, Bern Schwartz, and the Bodleian will be delivering an exhibition of Schwart's photography.

The Bodleian houses a significant and growing collection of photography. It has major holdings of significant photographers such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Helen Muspratt, Bern Schwartz, Daniel Meadows, and Paddy Summerfield; photobooks from the Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey Collection; prints gifted by James and Claire Hyman; albums from the Michael and Jane Wilson Collection of Nineteenth Century Photographs; as well as huge volumes of photography present in the Libraries' wider archive and print collections, for example the extensive photographic component within the archive of Oxfam GB. The study of and research into photography is increasing in prominence at the University of Oxford, and the post will be key to bringing together different strands of the University for research collaborations with various faculties, museums within the University, other organisations in the city, and with the History of Art department under the leadership of Professor Geoffrey Batchen, whose work focuses on the history of photography.

See Lydia's Linkedin profile here
The Baltic's Franki Raffles exhibition details are here

Portrait image: Lydia Heeley / Linkedin. 

As many of you know, the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University supports the following websites:

• Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839-1865 
• The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot
• Roger Fenton's Crimean Letterbooks
• Photographic Exhibitions of the RPS 1875-1915
• Members of the Royal Photographic Society

Our servers urgently need upgrading to maintain security and there will be some disruption impacting access to these over the coming months. We would encourage any students or researchers to make use of them in the next few days before they temporarily go off-line.

We will continue to update you on progress and hope to have all your favourite sites back up and running better than ever (and safer than ever) very soon.

Thank you for your support and patience.

Professor Kelley Wilder
Director, Photographic History Research Centre