Amelia Sanz
Chair of the Women Writers in History Working Group
University of Madrid
Contact amsanz@ucm.es
Mailing list neww@ggrupos.ucm.es
The underrepresentation of women in cultural historiography has been challenged since the 1970s by a number of feminist responses in the form of supplementary female canons. Women Writers in History takes this task a step further, and investigates historical sources until 1945 to find out whether and how female authors were read in the past. Evidence of readership, translations and commentary is being harvested and made searchable in a database, which serves as a collaborative research tool for the working group. In a previous iteration of this work, the group produced a virtual research environment named NEWW Women Writers (New approaches to European Women’s Writing ), developed between 2014 and 2023 under the direction of Suzan van Dijk (Huygens Institute, The Netherlands). A new database, named SHEWROTE (Studying Historical Early Women’s Reception: Oeuvres, Texts, Engagements) is currently under construction at Radboud University (The Netherlands), under the direction of Alicia C. Montoya. The group also runs a Brill book series and pursues methods of incorporating this new knowledge at the different levels of education through regional groups. In addition, the group also presents work in progress in webinars. The recordings of previous webinars are available on the Youtube channel Women Writers in History. Further activities consist in public outreach and designing future collaborative research projects.
Datasprint workshop, 22-23 June 2026 (Radboud University)
Recent research / Linking SHEWROTE data through Wikidata: hands-on workshop
Datasprint workshop, 15-16 January 2026 (Complutense University Madrid)
Connecting women writers with digital tools
Datasprint workshop, 5-6 December 2024 (Radboud University)
The new volume of the Brill series Women Writers in History has been published in Open Access: Digitising Women's Book Histories (Middle Ages - 1830) (eds. Lieke van Deinsen and Alicia C. Montoya)
Prof. Alicia C. Montoya (Radboud University), Chair
Prof. Amelia Sanz (Complutense University of Madrid), Chair
Prof. Marie-Louise Coolahan (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Dr. Nina Geerdink (Utrecht University)
Prof. Katja Mihurko (University of Nova Goriza)
Prof. Marie Nedregotten Sørbø (Volda University College)
Prof. Viola Parente-Čapková (University of Turku)
Prof. Nicole Pohl (Electronic Enlightenment)
Dr. Jasmine Westerlund (University of Turku)
Prof. Susan Brown (University of Guelph)
Prof. Suzan van Dijk (IND-Huygens Institute, Amsterdam)
Prof. Glenn Roe (Sorbonne Université)
WG Board Meeting and datasprint in Ljubljana, January 2024
WG Board Meeting in Nijmegen, December 2022
DARIAH Annual Event 2022: Athens, June 2022. Research panel.
DARIAH Annual Event Warsaw, May 2019: Women Writers in History Working Group Programme and Internal Meeting Minutes.
DARIAH Annual Event Paris 2018: Poster presentation.
Colleagues interested in joining the Women Writers in History working group can contact Chair Alicia Montoya (contact details below). The full list the working group members is available in a PDF. The list will be regularly updated.
Central and South-Eastern Europe: CEEPUS network Women Writers in History CIII-SI-1515-02-2122
The Netherlands and Belgium: Huizinga Research Network Women’s Writing in History
The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700 (RECIRC)
Texts on the move: Reception of women’s writing in Finland and Russia 1840–2020
Measuring Enlightenment: Disseminating Ideas, Authors and Texts in Europe, 1665-1830 (MEDIATE)
La Correspondance d’Isabelle de Charrière / De briefwisseling van Belle van Zuylen
Elektronska zbirka Pisma / Letters
Women Writers Route, a Council of Europe Cultural Route
SHEWROTE (Studying Historical Early Women’s Reception: Oeuvres, Texts, Engagements)
Chair of the Women Writers in History Working Group
University of Madrid
Chair of the Women Writers in History Working Group
Radboud University
Chair of the Women Writers in History Working Group
University of Turku