Hannah Speed
email: h.speed.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Research title: Women’s life-writing and the suffrage campaign in Scotland c.1890s-1990s.
Research summary
My overall research interests lie in women’s activism in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
My PhD research examines the relationship between the progress, long-term impact and remembrance of the Scottish suffrage campaign, and the personal experiences, subjectivities and narratives of its participants.
My project is funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities.
Supervisors
Grants
Theodora Bosanquet Bursary, Funds for Women Graduates, 2024.
Conferences
Conference Papers
Speed, Hannah. 19 May 2023. 'Community building in women's letters to the British labour/socialist press, 1906-1919,' Gender and Political Groups in Britain, c.1650-1950, University of Northampton, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 23 July 2024. 'Lifelong political identities in the autobiographies of Scottish women's suffrage campaigners,' Histories of Scottish Politics in the Age of Union, c.1700-1945, University of Durham, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 5 September 2024. 'Constructing the feminist self in relation to fellow activists in the autobiographies of Scottish women's suffrage campaigners,' Women's History Network Conference: Curating the Female Self, Royal Holloway University, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 30 October 2024. 'Glass half full: the part-time PhD,' This PhD Life, University of Glasgow, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 6 December 2024. 'Remembering and enacting political and social change: the memoir of Scottish suffragette Ethel Moorhead in This Quarter,' Periodicals, History, and Change Postgraduate Workshop, The Leeds Library, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 8 July 2025. 'Complex attitudes towards militancy in the life-writing of Scottish suffrage campaigners,' Social History Society Conference, Black Country Living Museum, UK.
Speed, Hannah. 5 September 2025. 'On the trail of Arabella Scott, Scotland’s missing suffragette,’ online.
Speed, Hannah. 13 September 2025. 'What did it mean to be a Scottish suffragist/suffragette?', Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow, UK.
Public Talks
Speed, Hannah. 9 March 2024.'The Scottish suffragettes in their own words', Dunoon Burgh Hall.
Speed, Hannah. 12 February 2026. 'Arabella Scott and the value of Scottish suffragette autobiography', Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Speed, Hannah. 19 February 2026. 'Glasgow's suffragettes in their own words', Langside Community Heritage.
Speed, Hannah. 25 April 2026. 'Eunice Murray: suffragette, politician, and writer', Glasgow Women's Library.
Teaching
Graduate Teaching Assistant on History 2A, University of Glasgow: 2024/25, 2025/26.
Additional information
Latest Publication
Speed, Hannah. 2023. 'The Edinburgh movement for women's higher education through the eyes of its founder: what can the writings and biography of Mary Crudelius reveal about the campaign (1866-77)?', Scottish Archives, 29, pp.84-97. Access here.
Positions
Steering Committee Member, Women's History Scotland (2022-present).
Co-convenor of the Hufton Postgraduate History Network (2025-26).
Background
I previously completed an MSc in Gender History at the University of Glasgow, and a BA (Hons) in History at the University of Oxford.
