Tuesday 2 June 2026 5:00pm to 7:00pm
CRASSH (Alison Richard Building)
Come along to connect across disciplines and rethink the study of Protestant women across different time periods and cultural contexts. This event is organised through the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.
Protestant women and the making of global religious worlds. Image created by Aayushi Gupta, 2026.
About
Protestant Women and the Making of Global Religious Worlds brings together scholars to reconsider the category of a “Protestant Woman”. The event will explore how Protestant women have shaped religious worlds across the Global North to the Global South and Eastern Europe.
Focusing on questions of gender, scripture, and religious identities, the event will open with a panel discussion followed by a networking session.
About the speakers
Based at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, Dr Ian Randall has published extensively on Protestant history and, more recently, on the history of Protestant women in world Christianity.
Dr Karen O’Donnell is a feminist theologian based at Westcott House (Cambridge) and affiliated with the Faculty of Divinity. O’Donnell’s work explores the relationship between bodies, trauma, and theology. She is especially interested in women’s embodied experiences, including pregnancy, reproductive loss, and menopause. She is the author of The Dark Womb: Re-Conceiving Theology Through Reproductive Loss.
Dr Lucy Sixsmith is a Junior Research Fellow in English at St John’s College, Cambridge. Her work focuses on book history, reading practices, and the material history of the Bible, with particular attention to how Bibles were handled, used, and repurposed in the nineteenth century.
About the organisers
This event is organised via a CRASSH network, convened by Aayushi Gupta and Laura Popa.
Aayushi Gupta is a PhD candidate in History at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research examines the visual practices of British missionary women’s organisations in colonial India, focusing specifically on the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission (ZBMM) and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS).
Dr Laura Popa holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary History from Giessen, Germany. Her dissertation, Nation-State Building at the Crossroads of Gender, Culture, and Religion: Protestant Women Schoolteachers in Italy, 1860–1915, investigated for the first time how and why a group of minority Protestant women tried to build the Italian nation through professional teaching and missionary activities.
The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) was established in 2001, with the objective of creating interdisciplinary dialogue across the many departments and faculties of the School of Arts and Humanities and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and to forge connections with science subjects.
Practicalities
Use the link above to register (free). Registration closes at 11am on Monday 1 June.