At the Faculty of Humanities, Roehampton University, I have carried out the literature reading and the data analysis under the mentorship of Dr. Katharina Rowold – who has conducted research on female engagements with the German educational term Bildung. As a two-way knowledge transfer scheme, the Department of Humanities has given me the opportunity to set up my own seminar series (‘Education and Life Writing: Interdisciplinary Narrative Research’), which I have run in collaboration with Espai Hibrid – an action-research unit based in the teacher-training section of the Department of Education, Lleida University (Spain), led by Professor Glòria Jové.
As an interdisciplinary project, at Roehampton I have also discussed my research with colleagues at the School of Education. In this sense, I have set up, in collaboration with Dr. Amy Palmer, a reading group – History of Education Reading Group – that has gathered researchers interested in sharing knowledge on the history of (women’s) education.
In order to improve my German and hence engage with Bildungstheorie, at the Goethe Institut London I have taken courses throughout my Fellowship. In addition, I have done a 3-month secondment at the Department of Education, Frankfurt University (23 September - 21 December 2018). This secondment has permitted, on the one hand, to improve my German (I have taken intensive courses at the Goethe Institute Frankfurt) and discuss my on-going research with Bildung specialist Professor Christiane Thompson.
As an MC Fellow I have written my first book-length publication: Barbara Bodichon’s Epistolary Education: Unfolding Feminism. I signed a contract with Palgrave Macmillan and I am in the latest stages of editing my manuscript. It will be out in 2020, before the end of REF 2021. It is the only study of the Bildung-like dimensions of letters undertaken so far and it will be of interest to historians and philosophers of education, to specialists in Narrative Inquiry/Epistolary Research and to scholars in the field of Women’s/Gender History. For its simultaneously a history and methodology book.
Having taken courses up to the B2 level in German, I am also preparing for the C1 exam, which I expect to take early 2020.
Throughout my MC Fellowship I have produced the following outcomes:
- Book chapter: ‘Des/unions de gènere i raça en la història del moviment sufragista als Estats Units’, in Sufragisme i sufragistes: reivindicant la ciutadania política de les dones, edited by Susanna Tavera and Josep Lluís Martín Berbois (2019).
- Edited book/translation: Barbara Bodichon: Oeuvres, Classiques Garnier (Paris).
- Encyclopaedia entry: ‘Barbara Bodichon’, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, edited by Lesa Scholl.
- Book review: Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, edited by Brenda Ayres in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.
- The History of Education Society UK invited me to take over the co-editorship of its History of Education Researcher.
- The International Auto/Biography Association (European Chapter) invited me to join the editorial board of its European Journal of Life Writing.
As part of my dissemination scheme, I have run a WordPress blog, Epistolarity (
https://meritxellsimonmartin.wordpress.com/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)).
To academic audiences I have presented my work-in-progress at conferences and in public institutions in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Argentina and Brazil.
