The Rising Tide: Women At Cambridge

In an exhibition marking 150 years since the founding of Cambridge’s first womens college, Cambridge University Library is sharing the unique stories of women who have studied, taught, worked and lived at the University in a new, free exhibition The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge, which runs from October 14, 2019-March 2020.

The exhibition will showcase the history of women at the University, the persistent marginalisation they were subject to, and the ongoing campaigns for gender justice and change since the establishment of Girton College in Cambridge in 1869, the first residential university establishment for women in the UK.

As another major strand of the Women at Cambridge celebrations, more than two dozen portraits of extraordinary women who have influenced the history of the University of Cambridge have lined the walls of the University Library’s historic North and South Galleries.

Following a theme of Cambridge College luminaries, Rosalind Franklin and Dame Jane Morris Goodall were included in Loci’s designs for four bedroom suites for a bespoke extension for local favourite CambsCuisine’s The Crown & Punchbowl at Horningsea.

Image Credit: Murray Edwards College, Pro-women’s degrees poster 1897 (UL collection), Sandi Toksvig (John Nguyen/JNVisuals), Girton students 1883 (Girton College), Cambridge University Boat Club 3/6/1, Dame Ann Dowling (engineering), Dr. Rosalind Franklin (Museum of London), Joyce Frankland Feminist Society, Prof. Dorothy Hodgkin (NPG)

Here an effigy of a female undergraduate hangs from the first floor of what is now the Cambridge University Press book shop, just alongfrom our offices on the King’s Parade.