Associate Patron
Sheila is a renowned socialist, feminist, historian, writer and campaigner. Sheila’s work takes up the task of unearthing and documenting the ‘hidden histories’ of our everyday lives, emphasising the ways in which class exploitation and sexual oppression have shaped these histories. As a founder of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain, helping to organise the first conference in 1970, Sheila’s activism in socialist and feminist politics made her a key figure of the British left. Much of her activism and work reveal a desire to highlight the personal aspects of political struggles and to make politics and history come alive with the stories of those who make it. Sheila’s highly acclaimed biography about Edward Carpenter - A Life of Liberty and Love - is a compelling portrait of a man described by contemporaries as a 'weather-vane' for his times whose life heeds the importance of looking at sexual struggles alongside socialist concerns.