Sophie Turbutt

Profile

I am a final-year doctoral researcher in the School of History, working on interwar Spanish anarchism and gender. My project is funded by WRoCAH (Arts and Humanities Research Council).

I completed my BA in History at the University of York between 2016 and 2020, and was lucky enough to include within that an Erasmus year abroad at the Complutense University of Madrid. I subsequently completed an MPhil in Modern European History at the University of Cambridge from 2020 to 2021, graduating with a Distinction.

In 2022 I completed a 3-month Visiting Doctoral Researcher placement at the Complutense University of Madrid, and in 2023 I completed a 2.5 month visiting placement at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

In 2022 I worked as a Research Assistant on the project ‘Stigma and Shame? Challenging Menstrual Taboo Through Time’, led by Dr Katie Carpenter and Dr Rae Gillibrand.

In September 2024 I was a co-organiser of the Secret Histories international workshop hosted at the University of Leeds, funded by WRoCAH and the GLAM Research Cluster.

In June 2022 I was a co-organiser of the Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula international symposium hosted at the University of Leeds, funded by WRoCAH and the Past and Present Society.

I am a co-founder of the Red Europea de Historia Contemporánea Española (REHCE) and was a co-organiser of its inaugural workshop in Edinburgh in 2023.

I have been a seminar tutor for the first-year undergraduate modules ‘The Making of the Twentieth Century’ and ‘Global Empires’, and I am an Education Outreach Fellow. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

I’ve undertaken a 6-week research placement at the Thackray Museum of Medicine (2023), and given a public lecture at Leeds Central Library (2024). I’ve appeared on the Sobremesa podcast, Anarchist Book Club podcast, and Anarchist Essays podcast.

Conference/Seminar Papers:

10/07/2024: ‘Emotions and Gender in Radical Friendships: The Transnational Networks of Spanish Anarchist Women’, Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual conference, University of Lisbon

25/06/2024: ‘Emotions and Gender in Radical Friendships: The Transnational Networks of Spanish Anarchist Women’, School of History PGR Seminar, University of Leeds

18/07/2023: ‘La moral sexual anarquista: Reivindicaciones a la autoridad y la regeneración social (1931-1939)’, New Directions in Modern Spanish History: A PGR/ECR Workshop, University of Edinburgh

18/05/2023: ‘Anarchist Social Life in Catalonia: intimacies, parenthoods/childhoods, friendships and workplaces’, Catalan Studies PGR/ECR Symposium, University of Sheffield

22/03/2023: ‘Women, Activism, and Relational Identity-Making in Spanish Anarchist Political Culture, 1923-1939’, Modern History Research Colloquium, University of Bern

27/01/2023: ‘Identity-making in the anarchist family: intimate relationships and parent-child relationships in the Spanish anarchist movement c.1923-1939’, Family and Marriage in Twentieth Century Spain Workshop, University of Leeds

10/09/2022: ‘Anarchist Womanhood: A Relational Approach to the Intersection Between Sexual/Gender Identity and Political Identity in 1920s-30s Spain’, Modern Spanish History Conference, University of Kent

15/10/2021: ‘Constructing Anarchist Womanhood: La Revista Blanca, 1923-1936’, Modern Spanish History Seminar, Universities of Edinburgh and Kent (Online)

07/07/2021: ‘Female Bodily Autonomy in the Spanish Anarchist Periodical, La Revista Blanca (1923-1936)’, New Voices and Global Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Periodicals Seminar, Manchester Metropolitan University (Online)

03/06/2021: ‘Female Bodily Autonomy in La Revista Blanca, 1931-1936’, International Seminar: New Perspectives on Mid-Twentieth Century Spain (1931-1959), Universities of Leeds and Granada (Online)

Publications:

Sophie Turbutt (2024), ‘Sexual Revolution and the Spanish Anarchist Press: Bodies, Birth Control and Free Love in the 1930s Advice Columns of La Revista Blanca’, Contemporary European History, 33:1, pp.338-356.

Joshua Newmark and Sophie Turbutt (2023), ‘Introduction: Twentieth Century Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 29:3, pp.295-299.

Research interests

• histories of gender and sexuality
• anarchism in Spain
• transnationalism
• histories of sex-reform/reproductive justice
• histories of protest, activism and social justice
• modern European history

Qualifications

• MPhil Modern European History
• BA History with a Year Abroad

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for the History of Ibero-America
• Health Histories
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality
• Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums
• War Studies