rganizers invite submissions for their 9th interdisciplinary conference exploring how women’s interactions with money, markets, and finance have shaped, and been shaped by, economic crises, financial literacy practices, and strategies for resilience across time and borders. This year, we especially welcome reflections on how evolving political landscapes reshape economic power, knowledge access, and inclusion.
The Foundling Museum will be celebrating the publication of their first edited collection, Women, Money, and Markets: Uncovering the Invisible Hands of the Economy (Boydell & Brewer, 2026).
Possible areas of interest include but are not limited to:
- Material Culture and Financial Activism: Drawing inspiration from The Foundling Hospital’s archives, how material items, including sewing/knitting, tokens, calendars, etc., were used by women to teach, learn, or execute financial skills, especially when formal institutions excluded them; how artifacts—e.g. pocketbooks, receipts, letters, teaching pamphlets—help to reveal financial practices that women adopted when formal systems were under threat or failed.
- Resilience in Marginalisation: Women’s survival strategies, real or fictional—e.g. cooperatives, informal credit, communal aid—in the face of systemic exclusion from formal markets, such as through.
- Literature, Media, and Representation: Historical and fictional portrayals of women’s money agency, and financial roles during economic collapses or shifts.
- Comparative and Cross-Cultural Dimensions: Global case studies comparing diverse legal and economic environments, from colonial economies to more recent policy changes. Differences and commonalities in how women in different societies responded to economic marginalisation or inclusion.
- Surviving Economic and Political Backlash: Fictional depictions of women exhibiting financial ingenuity against barriers, or amidst repression, particularly when legal safeguards are weakened. Women’s resilience practices during discriminatory regimes or policy rollbacks. How women acquired, deployed, or withheld financial knowledge during periods of political and economic upheaval. How diminished legal protections have disrupted women's financial agency.
Submission Guidelines
- Abstracts: Up to 300 words for individual papers.
- Panel Proposals: Include abstracts (300 words each) for up to three speakers.
- Formats: Individual papers, panels, or roundtable discussions.
- Submit to: Enquiries to Dr. Emma Newport
Submissions via Google Form or by QR code, available at the conference website.
Created 5 December 2025
Last modified 10 December 2025