Histories of Women’s Football in Britain and Ireland

This book brings together a range of researchers to explore the growth and development of the women’s game in Britain and Ireland. They are active across a diverse range of fields, from historians and heritage practitioners, to those from the arts such as playwrights and documentary directors. This edited collection draws together both regional and national studies to provide a more nuanced understanding of the history of the women’s game in Britain and Ireland than has been possible before. Chapters in this book explore new findings around the development of key teams, players, and organisations, and in doing so enrich the historiography of the game.

Often books on the history of football have taken a narrative approach focusing only on the research findings or ’story’. This is of course important, but in this book the editors also wanted to reflect the ways in which research into the history of women’s football has been shared and explored within a range of spaces and communities. There is a huge untapped audience who want to engage with the history of the sport. By reflecting on previous arts/heritage-based projects we can explore new avenues regarding how academic research can be made accessible to the general public and in turn how arts/ heritage-based projects can inform academic research.

Fiona Skillen is a Professor of history in the Department of Social Sciences, in the School for Business & Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. Her research concerns women’s sport during the late 19th & 20th centuries, she has published extensively in this subject area. She regularly contributes to radio and television programmes on the history of sport. She has recently completed a project on the history of women’s football in Scotland 1850-1939.

Helena Byrne is a librarian who specialises in web archiving and is an independent researcher focusing on the history of women’s football in Ireland. Her previous publications cover both web archives and sports history. She has contributed history segments to the FAI Women’s National Team match programmes, news publications and exhibitions.

Gary James is a Visiting Research Professor at New York University and Honorary Research Fellow at De Montfort University. His current project is documenting the history of female involvement & participation in football within the Manchester region. James is the founder of the international Football History Conference.