Just added is a new entry from one of the first students to have taken Women’s Studies at Ruskin in 1993, Marie Thompson.

 Many notable women have been ‘graduates’ of Ruskin: not least Annie Kenney, leading member of the WSPU, who was a correspondence course student.

 Women were not admitted as residential students until after the 1914 -18 war. One of the first was ‘Miss Lister’ about whom future Coventry Labour councillor (and fellow student), George Hodgkinson, would declare in his letters:

‘ Marx’s treatises on Capital in three volumes are terrible reading but I understand that Miss Lister has read them. She is a full blown Bolshie and advertises the fact too by wearing a blood red knitted sports coat.’*

We know nothing of Miss Lister –  can you help and provide some information to start her database entry?

The Certhe and MA in Women’s Studies, developed by Jane Thompson, were ground-breaking in the College.  Students wrote some fascinating dissertations often rooted in their life experiences. If you were a student in the 1990s on these courses we would love to have your entry.

 Hilda Kean

* Unpublished letter 22 October 1919, previously kept in Ruskin library and quoted in Hilda Kean ‘Myths of Ruskin College’, Studies in the Education of Adults vol 28:2, 1996, p.218