Emma Sibbald

Thesis Title: Invisible Borrowers: British women users of university libraries, 1600-1850

Supervisor: Professor Abigail Williams

Research Interests: Women's reading practises; history of reading, libraries, and institutions; the material book; textile art and fashion history.

Doctoral research: This doctoral project challenges prevailing notions that women's engagement with reading during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was confined solely to domestic settings, or circulating and subscription libraries. Instead, it emphasises that women actively participated in the intellectual and daily life of Britain's university libraries, in small but profoundly significant numbers. My research is generously funded by the Oxford-Cecil Lubbock scholarship.