How theatre helped the women’s suffrage movement

100 years ago today, 8.4 million women in Britain over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. One Essex researcher has helped uncover lost stories about the role of theatre in the suffrage movement.

Professor Katharine Cockin joined our Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies in October 2017 and is an expert on women’s suffrage theatre – in particular the life of Edith Craig, a theatre director who got involved with the women’s suffrage movement and staged productions across the UK, which brought the women’s suffrage arguments to huge audiences.

Read more about Edith Craig and women’s suffrage theatre in our latest research case study.

Professor Cockin has written extensively on women’s suffrage theatre, most recently publishing Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art (2017) – her second biography of Craig. In 2018 Professor Cockin will be giving a keynote talk at the People’s History Museum, Manchester on 10 March and talks at Jaywick Arts Centre on 26 October and Essex Record Office on 6 and 13 November as the centenary of enfranchisement is marked.