About this Event
Nicola Verdon (1970-2024) was an acclaimed historian who made an outstanding contribution to the study of agricultural and rural history. Her research on the British countryside, and particularly on female agricultural workers, was internationally recognised.
Following her untimely death at the end of 2024, the British Agricultural History Society is supporting a two-day memorial conference at Sheffield Hallam University to celebrate her pioneering work. It will be held on Thursday 30 April and Friday 1 May 2026.
All Society members, friends of Nicola, researchers in areas in which Nicola was engaged and those who admired her work and regret her loss are invited to attend.
PROGRAMME
Thursday 30 April 2026
10.30 registration, coffee
11.00 introduction
Session One, 11.15-12.45
Jane Whittle, ‘Women’s wage labour in nineteenth-century agriculture: a long-term perspective’
Joyce Burnette, ‘Agricultural Day Labourers: What Did They Do the Rest of the Year?’
Paul Warde, ‘Tamlaght 1840: women’s work in an Irish community’
Lunch
Session Two, 2.00-3.00
Henry French, ‘Pioneers: Women and Farming on Exmoor, 1820-1900’
Nadine Vivier, ‘The role of women in running farms (France, 1840-1914)’
Break
Session three, 3.30-4.30
Claire Griffiths, ‘A Landscape for Women: citizenship, work and rural modernity in the novels of Winifred Holtby’
Andrew Walker, ‘The changing roles and representation of women on the agricultural showground: the case of Lincolnshire, 1867-1939’
Break
Session four, 5.00-6.00
Alison Twells, ‘A Dog Named Sheffield? Hannah Law’s letters from Tasmania, 1835-1841’
Friday 1 May 2026
Session five, 10.00-11.00 (by Zoom)
Jennifer Jones, ‘“George has gone to Durham Ox to look for “Rodney”, the rascal”: Animal agency and the settler colonial project prior to fencing’.
Emma Robertson and Jennifer Jones, ‘From Squatter’s Daughters to “Pioneering” Rice Farmers: Lois and Margaret Grant and the Australian Rice Industry, 1922-28’
Break
Session six, 11.30-12.00:
Flying the flag for Nicola. An open session of reminiscence and recollection
Session seven, 12.00-1.00
Karen Sayer, ‘Who did the work? Looking for labourers after the 1947 Agriculture Act’
Sian Edwards, ‘Constructing the Farmer’s Wife: Gender, Domesticity, and Representation in the British Farming Press, 1945-1960’ (by Zoom)
Lunch
Session eight, 2.00-3.00
Samantha A. Shave, ‘Outside the Workhouse: Rural Women Claiming Independence under the New Poor Law’
Richard Hoyle/Catherine Glover, ‘Proprietary girl’s schools in late nineteenth-century rural England’
Session nine, 3.00-4.00
Katy Taylor, ‘From rural Ireland to suffrage and animal rights: Francis Power Cobbe (1822-1904)’
4.00-4.30
Closing remarks. Tea. Conference disperses.
Please note that this will not be a residential meeting and those attending are invited to make their own arrangements for accommodation.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield City Centre, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00 to GBP 75.00
