Dr Sophie Turbutt

Profile

I am a Management Support Officer in the School of History at Leeds.

I have previously worked at the University of York as a Global Opportunities Administrator and Worldwide Universities Network Coordinator.

I completed my BA in History at the University of York between 2016 and 2020, and included 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.

Research interests

I am furthermore an early-career historian of emotions, gender and intimacy, whose doctoral research examined the anarchist movement in twentieth-century Spain. I completed my PhD in the School of History at Leeds in 2025. My thesis, funded by WRoCAH (Arts and Humanities Research Council), was titled ‘Comradeship, Gender, and the Making of Anarchist Womanhood in Spain, c.1923-1939’.

From 2026-2028, I am a Specialist in the AHRC Curiosity Award project ‘A Century of Anarchist Sexual Politics in Global Perspective’, led by the University of Surrey. The project takes the couple as its unit of analysis, to explore anarchist revolutionary theory and practices surrounding love. My research strand centres on love in older age among Spanish anarchists, especially those who fled Spain after the Civil War.

I am additionally an Editorial Fellow at History Workshop, where I commission and publish articles about radical history and ‘history from below’.

Qualifications

• PhD History: University of Leeds
• MPhil Modern European History: University of Cambridge
• BA History with a Year Abroad: University of York

Professional memberships

• HEA Associate Fellowship
• Social History Society
• Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies