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• Dr Tanya Evans

Dr Tanya Evans

Research Fellow
MA Women’s History, University of London
MA (Hons) University of Edinburgh
PhD University of London

Office: W6A, 402
Phone: +61 2 9850 8834

Email: Tanya.Evans@humn.mq.edu.au

 

Since gaining my PhD. from the University of London in 2002 I have worked as a social and cultural historian of motherhood, marriage, the family, sexuality, gender and poverty in Britain from 1700 to the present. I also have a long-standing interest in the history of philanthropy and voluntary organisations. Since taking up my Macquarie University Research Fellowship in October 2008 I have been working on a transnational history of motherhood in early colonial Australia and Britain, 1750-1850.

• Research
• Selected Publications
  

Research

Current Research Projects

Childbirth and Motherhood in Early Colonial Australia and Britain, 1750-1850

This project will extend the research I undertook as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London on ‘Unmarried Motherhood in England and Wales, 1918-1995’ as well as my PhD. and the book that resulted from it Unfortunate Objects: Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London (2005) about the meanings and experiences of single motherhood in eighteenth-century London. This work explored the material lives of men and women who produced illegitimate offspring and examined those lives within a shared social, economic and cultural plebeian context. It analysed how women coped when they found themselves pregnant, the consequences of bearing an illegitimate child and poor women’s survival networks. It did so by exploring the encounters between poor women and the parish as well as philanthropic authorities in the city.
My research to date has indicated that unmarried mothers did not constitute a deviant minority within British society. They were neither powerless in the face of social and economic dislocation nor of personal crises. This work is part of a growing international recognition of the power, limited though it may have been, of the poor. In contrast to popular perception many unmarried mothers could expect to find compassion rather than ostracism a response to their plight. The project will seek to test these findings within the British colonial context.
To date the historical study of motherhood has tended to be bound by the nation-state. My new project aims to make an innovative transnational intervention in the history of motherhood, by tracing cross-cultural definitions, meanings and experiences of childbirth and motherhood focussing on British women convicts, ex-convicts, the free female population and indigenous women in colonial Australia between 1788 and 1850. It will also explore how British ideas on poverty, morality and maternity were translated in the colonial context and how the expansion of empire impacted on the experience and meanings of childbirth and family life.

Research Funding and fellowships

• Oct 2004-Dec 2007 Research Fellow, Centre for Contemporary British History, Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London working on ‘Unmarried Motherhood in England and Wales, 1918-1995’.
• Jul 2003-Sep 2003 British Academy Small Research Grant awarded for research in Sydney on ‘Motherhood in Early-Colonial Australia’.
• Oct 2002-Dec 2002 British Academy Small Research Grant awarded for research in New York and Harvard on ‘The Language of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England’.
• Oct 2001-Oct 2002 Past and Present Postdoctoral Research Fellow, IHR
• Oct 2000- Oct 2001 Scouloudi Fellow, IHR
• Oct 1999- Oct 2000 Economic History Society Postan Fellow, IHR

Qualifications

• Goldsmiths’ College, University of London - PhD. ‘Unmarried Motherhood in Eighteenth-Century London’ (2002)
• Royal Holloway, University of London - MA Women’s History (1996)
  
• University of Edinburgh - MA (Hons) Politics and Modern History (1995)

Membership of Professional Bodies

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK)

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Selected Publications

Books

‘Unfortunate Objects’: Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Forthcoming

• Tanya Evans and Pat Thane, Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Unmarried Motherhood in Modern England (2009)
• Tanya Evans and Pat Thane (eds.), Special Issue of Women’s History Review (2009) comprising papers presented at the Symposium on Lone Motherhood, 23rd November 2007, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University

 

Book Chapters

• ‘Women, Marriage and the Family’ in Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus (eds.), Women’s History Britain, 1700-1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
• ‘Blooming Virgins all Beware’: Love, Courtship, and Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century English Popular Literature’, in Alysa Levene, Thomas Nutt, Samantha Williams (eds.), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Forthcoming

• ‘Stopping the Poor Getting Poorer: The Establishment and Professionalisation of Poverty NGOs, 1945-1995’, Matthew Hilton, Nick Crowson and James McKay (eds.), NGOs in Contemporary Britain: Non-state Actors in Society and Politics since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
• ‘Knowledge and Experience, 1750 to the present’, in Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher (eds.), The Routledge History of Sex and the Body in the West, 1500 to the present (Routledge, 2011)

 

Journal Articles

• ‘’Unfortunate Objects’: London’s Unmarried Mothers in the Eighteenth Century’, Gender and History, 17:1, 2005.

Forthcoming

• ‘‘The Other Woman and her Child’: Extra-Marital Affairs and Illegitimacy in Twentieth-Century England’, Women’s History Review, 2009.

Other Publications

• ‘Is it futile to get non-resident fathers to maintain their children?’, October 2006, www.historyandpolicy.org
  Pat Thane, Tanya Evans, Liza Filby, Nick Kimber, Helen McCarthy, Simon Millar, Mel Porter, Becky Taylor, Equalities in Great Britain, 1946-2006, www.theequalitiesreview.org.uk, March 2007. Report to a government Equalities Review, chair Trevor Phillips.
• Tanya Evans and Pat Thane, ‘Secondary Analysis of Dennis Marsden’s Mothers Alone’ Economic and Social Data Service, Qualidata, 2006
• ‘A Lottery was as Good as it Ever Got’, Times Higher Education Supplement, June 28th 2002.

 

Review Articles

• Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, volume one (London, 1998), Gender and History, 12, 1, April 2000, pp. 251-2.
• Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, 2000), The London Journal, volume 26, no. 2, 2001, pp. 77-78.
• John Welshman, From Transmitted Deprivation to Social Exclusion, Policy, Poverty and Parenting (Policy Press, 2007), Twentieth-Century British History, 2008.

Forthcoming

• Katherine Holden, The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England 1914-1960, (Manchester University Press, 2007), Reviews in History 2008.

 

Conference Papers since 2004

• ‘The Impact of Voluntary Organisations on Reform of the Law on Marriage and Divorce in the 1920s and 1960s’, Voluntary Action History Society, University of Liverpool, 17th July 2008.
• ‘The Other Woman and her Child’: Extra-Marital Affairs and Illegitimacy in Twentieth-Century England’, Seminar on Contemporary British History, Institute of Historical Research, 20th February 2008.
• ‘The Other Woman and her Child’: Extra-Marital Affairs and Illegitimacy in Twentieth-Century England’, Symposium on Lone Motherhood, The Woman’s Library, London Metropolitan University, 23rd November 2007.
• ‘Morals are not all they were made out to be’: The Changing Meanings and Experiences of Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England, University of Warwick, 20th October 2007.
• ‘Stopping the Poor Getting Poorer’: The Establishment and Professionalisation of the Poverty Lobby, 1945-1995’, Dango Conference, University of Birmingham, 5th-6th July 2007.
• ‘The Professionalisation of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child/One-Parent Families, 1918-1995’, From ‘Voluntary Organisation to ‘NGO’? Voluntary Action in Britain since 1900, Centre for Contemporary British History Annual Conference, 30th June 2006.
• ‘Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Single Women in History: 1000-2000, University of the West of England, 30th June 2006.
• ‘The Problem of Context in Secondary Analysis’. ESDS ‘QUADS’ Workshop, London South Bank University, 3rd May 2006.
• “No They Don’t Look Down on Me; They all Admire me”, Unmarried Mothers on National Assistance, 1965-66’, Social History Society Conference, University of Reading, 31st March 2006.
• ‘Secondary Analysis of Dennis Marsden’s Mothers Alone’ ESDS Qualidata Workshop, University of Sussex, 19th January 2006.

Historical Consultancy

Exhibition

• Guest Curator for Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Lone Mothers Past and Present, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, 17th October 2007-29 March 2008
• Critics’ Choice in Time Out and The Times.
• Consultant for the Foundling Museum in London.

Television

• Interviewee and consultant for a documentary on Thomas Coram entitled ‘The Man who Saved Children’, produced by RDF Media and shown on Channel 4, April 17th 2003.
• Interviewee and consultant for a documentary on Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick entitled ‘Upstairs, Downstairs Love’, produced by Granada Television broadcast on Channel 4, 23rd June 2008.

Radio

• Interviewed on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, 21st November 2007.

 

Conference and Seminar Organisation

• Symposium on Lone Motherhood held at The Women’s Library 23rd November 2007.
• Voluntary Action in Britain since 1900, Centre for Contemporary British History Annual Conference, 30th June 2006 on the History of Voluntary Organisations.
• Convenor of the Postgraduate Seminar and the Gender and History Seminars at the IHR 1997-2002.

 

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