Please see below for a list of events organised as part of the Women In The Hills research network. Please click on each event for more information.
Thursday 20 January 2022:
Workshop 1: Mountains and Motherhood
When: 1-4pm
Where: online; free of charge; register on eventbrite
Brief description:
A two-part event, featuring Helen Mort in conversation with Kerri Andrews, followed by a roundtable of experts and audience Q&A.
Part 1: Poet, novelist and climber Helen Mort in conversation with writer and WITH co-investigator Kerri Andrews about mothering, mountains, and adventuring.
Part 2: Helen Mort joins novelist Sarah Moss, mountain running guide (and running-writer, WITH Advisory Team member and project partner) Keri Wallace, artist and choreographer Simone Kenyon, and academic and expert in risk in sport Amanda West in a roundtable discussion about how motherhood shapes women’s engagements with mountains and mountaineering.
There will be opportunities for audience Q & A at the end of both parts.
Date tbc
Workshop 2: ‘Girls’ Worlds Shrink, While Boys’ Expand’: How Girls’ Engagements with the Outdoors Change During Adolescence
Where: Online
When: tbc
Booking details: coming soon
Brief description:
In 2015, health policy researcher Kelly Hallman noted that ‘with puberty, girls’ worlds shrink, while boys’ expand.’ This workshop will explore the nature of that shrinkage: how the outdoor territory in which girls feel comfortable contracts during adolescence; how this affects girls’ engagements with sport and leisure; and how it affects women’s subsequent experiences of outdoor leisure. Among other speakers, the workshop will include WITH’s principal investigator Rachel Hewitt, and the campaign group Make Space for Girls.
Workshop 3
date tbc
One-day Network Workshop: Women’s Lives
Where: University of Manchester
Booking details: coming soon
Brief description:
The Women In The Hills network’s discussions and explorations of women’s experiences of running, hiking and climbing in UK hills will be structured around three focal categories, each the subject of a one-day workshop: (a) women’s bodies, (b) women’s social circumstances, and (c) woman as recipients and makers of decisions about land. These three categories will provide a framework for investigating how sex (physiology) and gendered social structures might intersect with social class, ethnicity, dis/ability and impairment, sexuality, gender identity, and religion, to shape women’s experiences and representations of land use.
This second workshop will bring together data and policy analysts, activists, charity representatives, creative practitioners, outdoor industries experts, and leisure providers, among others, to discuss how characteristics of women’s lives and social roles shape their experiences of access to outdoor leisure.
date tbc
Where: location tbc
Booking details: invitation only
Brief description:
This field weekend will combine workshops and sessions in navigation, running and hiking, care for the self and body, and creative practice, to explore the factors that hinder and promote access to UK hills for vulnerable women; the benefits of such access; and encourage creative responses to such experiences.
date tbc
Where: location tbc
Booking details: coming soon
Brief description:
The network will culminate in a conference in which invited and open-call participants will share discussions and findings generated throughout the network, and contribute further research, in order to forge a holistic, multi-disciplinary, cross-sector exploration of women’s participation in, and representation of, upland recreation; and in which the draft of an overall report into the factors that constrain and improve women’s participation in outdoor leisure will be discussed.