Wendy Stokes

Academic Leader: Research and Graduate Studies

Dr Wendy Stokes has degrees from the University of Westminster, St Antony’s College, Oxford and London Guildhall University. Her research to date has focused on the theory and practice of women’s political participation – in local and central government, in the UK and around the world. Her book Women in Contemporary Politics was published by Polity in 2005 and she is currently developing long-standing interests in theories of democracy and political representation in a book on citizenship, also for Polity. Recent conference papers include "Women’s Political Parties" and "Feminist Theatre".

Dr Stokes was briefly on the executive of the Political Studies Association (PSA) and convened the PSA specialist group Women in Politics for rather longer.

Teaching responsibilities include:

  • Undergraduate: Issues in Global Citizenship
  • Postgraduate: Human Security

Administrative responsibilities include:

  • recruitment, coordination and progression of research students in the Law Governance and International Relations Department.

Research interests include:

  • feminism
  • democracy
  • political representation
  • citizenship

Supervision areas

She is particularly keen to hear [W.Stokes@londonmet.ac.uk] from students with an interest in women’s movements of the latter part of the twentieth century especially women in politics, local government and the Women's National Commission. Although her interest has a focus on Britain, she has an interest in the international nature of women’s movements, particularly the Beijing Conference.

Supervision of PhD students who use The Women’s Library Collections is of particular interest to her with her interest in women in politics. The following archives would be very suitable for PhD students – both are newly catalogued with little/no existing research:

  • Records of the Campaign Against Pornography (CAP) (1985-1997). CAP was established in 1987 as a response to Dr Clare Short MP's bill to ban erotica such as 'Page 3' in national newspapers and the archive includes papers related to the ‘Off the Shelf’ campaign.
  • Papers of Charlotte Mary Stott (1915-1995). In 1957, Mary Stott became the founding editor of The Guardian’s Women’s Pages. She was an active feminist who was a founding member in 1970 of Women in Media (archive due for release in 2009) and the last president of the Women's Press Club in 1970. She also established the National Association for Widows, of which she was president from 1993 to 1995. She chaired the Fawcett Society from 1980-1982. 
Wendy Stokes