Meet the Historians

As part of Women's History Month, we invited two PhD students - Sophy Higgins and Ashleigh Percival-Borley - to tell us a bit about themselves and their research.

Sophy Higgins, Kings College London

I’m currently a third year War Studies PhD Candidate at the Freeman Air and Space Institute (King’s College London) and the Royal Air Force Museum. My work is funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (AHRC training grant: AH/R012679/1) and focuses on the class-based influence of women on the development of aviation in interwar Britain. It takes a case study approach to argue that social class governed access to aviation, and thus it was class specifically that facilitated women’s social, political and economic influence within these circles. Most importantly, undertaking this work in collaboration with the RAF Museum has been a brilliant opportunity to utilise internal expertise and knowledge of the archives when tackling largely under-explored collections like the Lady Trenchard scrapbooks. Beyond this, the RAF Museum has provided a great platform for me to disseminate this research, which aims to show that women were always there, even outside of direct service, and we must understand this in order to fully appreciate how the RAF developed into the service it is today.

Being a LAHP student has also meant I’ve been lucky enough to undertake various PhD placements with museums, including a three month full-time stint at the Tower of London last year. More closely related to my doctoral research, I spent three months working with Kingston Museum on a project to research and reinterpret their aviation collection. This project saw me build on existing research into the area’s factories – and the famous aircraft that they designed and produced – to consider themes like labour, urban landscapes, and the role of women. I turned this research into a series of outputs, including an interactive map of aviation sites around the borough and updated gallery content for future installation. In January of this year, I started my final LAHP placement at the National Army Museum to help identify hidden or under-researched themes within the collection, focusing largely on women’s service. So far, this has included conducting research for a gallery tour for International Women’s Day delivered by the Community Engagement team. On International Women's Day itself, I also spent the day at Bletchley Park, speaking on a panel as part of their symposium on the theme of influence and memory of women in the Second World War.

Overall, this varied work has solidified to me how important heritage and museums continue to be in challenging traditional narratives of conflict that shape how the public engage with an ever-evolving military nowadays.

Ashleigh Percival-Borley, Durham University

I am a British Army veteran, military historian and BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. Currently a doctoral candidate at Durham University, my research interrogates the cultural afterlives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Second World War organisation responsible for sabotage and subversion across occupied Europe and the Middle East. Drawing on the Imperial War Museums’ SOE sound archive and the Legasee archive, my work analyses the oral histories of male and female operatives to explore how intelligence myths are constructed, performed and preserved. My research investigates how ideas of heroism, moral ambiguity, masculinity, femininity and national identity are shaped by memory, and how archives and museums influence public understandings of Britain’s secret war.

Alongside my doctoral research, I regularly contribute to public and policy-facing discussions on military history and gender. As a New Generation Thinker, I have broadcast on BBC Radio 4, bringing academic research on intelligence, the military and memory to wider audiences. I have also delivered lectures at the NATO Joint Force Command Brunssum in support of its Women, Peace and Security agenda, reflecting my ongoing engagement with contemporary military institutions.