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Feminist Archive North Collections

Feminist Archive North guide

The Feminist Archive North (FAN) houses collections on women's movements, organisations and campaigns. Its initial focus was the North of England, but its collections now cover the rest of the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the wider world.

The material, which dates back to 1969, covers a variety of topics including:

  • the family
  • health
  • employment and other social policy issues
  • the arts and media
  • militarism and peace
  • lesbianism
  • women’s studies
  • Women’s Aid
  • local women’s centres
  • criminal justice
  • men’s violence against women and girls
  • the politics of the Women’s Liberation Movement and other global women’s movements

The archive is regularly used by students, academics, and activists for research as well as interest.

It holds over 2000 personal papers, conference proceedings, dissertations, books, posters and video and audio recordings. It also contains thousands of local, regional and international feminist journals, pamphlets and newsletters, many of which are unique to the FAN collection.

The collection also contains complete runs of important journals such as Spare Rib, Shrew, Women’s Report, Scarlet Woman, Shifra, and Women’s Voice.

How to access the archive

The Feminist Archive North is a charitable organisation managed by trustees and volunteers. Readers are advised to contact FAN directly for in-depth information about the collections, but material can be requested through Special Collections for consultation in the Special Collections reading room.

FAN has also partnered in a ‘Using Archives to Teach Gender’ project with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, through which it has produced a database of images from the collection that can be used in teaching and coursework.

More information about the holdings can be found on the FAN website.

In our catalogue