Introducing the new GENDER.ED Undergraduate Summer Intern

Lauren Hood introduces herself as the new GENDER.ED summer intern and discusses the exciting projects she will be working on.

Hello everyone! My name is Lauren and in September I will be starting the 4th year of my undergraduate degree in history. Through my history degree I have studied a wide range of geographies and time periods, and I have become attuned to take a gendered lens to understand the events and themes which I am studying. I particularly enjoy studying modern history and am interested in the role gender has played in influencing people's lives and experiences in modern British, but especially Scottish, history. I enjoy exploring the intersection of gender and class in Scottish history, which has inspired me to focus my upcoming dissertation on investigating how gender influenced the lives of working-class people moving to and living in the Scottish new town of East Kilbride.

As the GENDER.ED Communications and Events Intern this summer, I look forward to gaining a better understanding of how gender and sexuality are studied across different disciplines at the University of Edinburgh. In this role I will be working on an oral history project which interviewed university staff on their experiences teaching and researching gender and sexuality at the University of Edinburgh. Alongside this, I will be working on creating content for the GENDER.ED blog, which involves both writing my own posts and editing the work of other authors. I am excited to further develop my skills in editing and content creation through the various communication projects which I will be working on over the summer, skills which I have already developed through my roles as copyeditor and columnist at the School of History, Classics and Archeology’s student-led Retrospect Journal.

My internship includes working within the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, which will allow me to help with the promotion of the third book created from the Dangerous Women Project. This involves attending some exciting events happening in Edinburgh throughout the summer, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival! These events offer a great opportunity to educate others about the Dangerous Women Project’s newest book Women Who Dared and promote the important wider gender and sexuality research happening through the GENDER.ED network at the University.

Overall, I am really excited by the opportunity to intern at GENDER.ED over the summer and am looking forward to working with the GENDER.ED and IASH teams.