Sarah’s research focuses on female geographers, explorers and scientists active in the 20th century, looking particularly at women’s participation in Royal Geographical Society supported expeditions from 1913-1970. Her PhD research, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and undertaken collaboratively with the University of the West of England and the RGS-IBG, was the first to map out women’s participation in these expeditions, grounded in archival work in the Collections of the RGS-IBG. Her research interests include women’s history and the history of exploration and of geography, with particular focus on ideas about heroism and masculinity, and how these have potentially obscured women’s geographical work and contributions. Prior to her PhD research, Sarah completed her BA (History) and MPhil (Modern South Asian Studies) at St. John’s College Cambridge. She currently works at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in the Research and Higher Education team.

Keynote: Mapping out terra incognita: women and the Royal Geographical Society

Sarah’s talk will explore women’s involvement with and relationships with the Royal Geographical Society, focusing on women’s participation in Royal Geographical Society-supported expeditions between 1913 and 1970. It will provide some key contexts, considering the earlier history of women and the RGS in the 19th century, including the debates around women’s Fellowship in the early 1890s, and the significance of 1913, the year women gained permanent admission to the Fellowship, as a watershed moment. The talk will tell the stories of some of the many women involved with these expeditions, while situating these in the context of the wider cohort as mapped out in my PhD research. It will range widely both across the period considered, and geographically, taking in a range of different expeditionary environments, and focusing on both well-known women and more marginal figures.

Catherine Edsell FRGS is an adventurer and global expedition leader. An avid naturalist, she combines her passion for adventure and effective conservation through independent and collaborative expedition work in the most remote areas of the world. She is a trained PADI Divemaster, Reef Check Trainer, coral reef ecologist, mountain leader, jungle trainer and yoga teacher, with 20 years experience working in all manner of terrains, often with her children in tow. Inspired by her immersion in stunning natural habitats, Catherine is now leading a series of transformative adventures solely for women. Through travel to extreme wilderness locations, in close proximity to wildlife, Catherine designs expeditions that open up her world of adventure to any woman who wishes to seize the opportunity to step out of their comfort zone, push their own mental and physical boundaries, and in doing so, rediscover themselves.

Keynote: Marianne North: A Kindred Spirit

Over the course of 13 years, Marianne North painted over 800 works whilst travelling through 5 continents and 17 countries. She didn’t even start this long-term expedition until she was 40 years old, yet she went on to challenge all the social norms of her era. Although she was not a trained botanical artist, her vibrant oil paintings documented new species and were an incredibly valuable asset to the biological community. Fascinatingly, the paths of Catherine and Marianne have crossed, not in real time, but with real consequence. Marianne’s love for Kew Gardens - the palm house in particular - was her inspiration for travel, and was where Catherine took refuge and worked after returning from her own 7-year stint in the jungles of Indonesia, Borneo and Central America. Catherine too searched for pitcher plants in Sarawak, trekking through the same chalky mud, and lived in the same paradise. With time to explore Marianne’s, work, her grit and determination, Catherine discovered that her maxims echoed Marianne’s: “Begin now by observing as much as you can of what nature teaches, and you will find a new happiness in life.”.

Jacki Hill-Murphy MA, FRGS, is an explorer, writer and speaker who has travelled to some of the most inhospitable places on earth to re-create the journeys of daring women adventurers from the past. In tracking valiant women who left inhibition at home and journeyed into the unknown, Hill-Murphy pays tribute to their invincible spirits and achievements. She has followed in the footsteps of Victorian explorers Isabella Bird who travelled by yak across the Digar-La in Ladakh, India; Mary Kingsley, who pioneered the route to the 13,255 summit of Mount Cameroon, and Kate Marsden, who trudged from Moscow to Siberia in search of a cure for leprosy. Hill-Murphy also braved piranha-infested waters in a dugout canoe to replicate the 1769 expedition of Isabel Godin, the only survivor of a 4,200-mile expedition along the Amazon River. Jacki says: “We are all adventuresses who need to travel to be who we are and we are better people for it.”

Keynote: Why we should shout out for the early female explorers

When Isabella Bird rode on a yak across the Digar-La in Ladakh, when Mary Kingsley pioneered a new route to the summit of Mount Cameroon, when Gertrude Bell travelled through dangerous territory across the Syrian Desert in Iraq, and when Kate Marsden sledged across Russia and Siberia in the middle of winter, they each published their findings in books and lectures. What we learn from these travels are that they were documenting the lands, communities, cultural exchanges and ancient ceremonies in an era when men were heralded as the great explorers. Many of the names of these great women have disappeared into obscurity, and yet, we have much to learn from their observations, bravery, and tenacity. Over a century later there is now a great enthusiasm to make their names known again. These women were unique adventuresses who travelled to break away from the confines of their society and are still contributing to the knowledge of our world.

A former risk averse no sayer, Jo’s first foray into adventure on a bike ride in Peru back in 2004 gradually changed her life. From business to the mountains over a series of years and many expeditions has turned Jo into a high altitude go getter. She now works as an Expedition Leader, Outdoor Instructor and motivator of our next generation of adventurers! She has also reached the summit of Everest and Manaslu as well as 5 of the 7 summits (with 30 expeditions on Kilimanjaro) and is aiming to complete the last 2 of the 7 within the next 18 months. A real advocate of #thisgirlcan as she says, ‘if I can you can too’. The subject of her talk, Junko Tabei, had the same principles and is a shining light of female mountaineers in an age of a truly male dominated sphere of life.

Keynote: Junko Tabei - a pioneering woman of many mountaineering and social firsts

Walking the audience through the first 36 years of Junko’s incredible life from her poorly start in 1939 to being the first woman to stand on the top of Everest in 1975. She was a pioneer, a motivator, a mountaineer, a teacher, a mother and so much more. Supported by her husband who she met on a ridge line in the Japanese Alps, a life partner who put his own mountaineering ambitions aside in order for Junko to achieve hers. What a truly inspiring woman.

Dr Kate Strasdin is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Falmouth University’s Fashion & Textile Institute & a Specialist Visiting Lecturer at the DeTao Masters Academy in Shanghai. She is Deputy Curator at the Totnes Fashion & Textile Museum & an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society. Her first book Inside the Royal Wardrobe was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

Keynote: An easy day for a lady: the dress of the early mountaineers

The second half of the 19th century saw ever growing numbers of women taking to the hills and mountains of the world and participating at the highest level. This presentation tells the stories of some of these women and debunks the myths that surround notions of impractical dress, acknowledging the reality of their achievements on their clothing of choice. It also examines some of the early performance sportswear specialists such as Burberry as they began to cater to women as customers.

Rosemary J Brown is a journalist devoted to putting female explorers and adventurers ‘on the map.’ She re-traced the journey of journalist/adventurer Nellie Bly who circled the globe faster than anyone ever had in 1889- alone carrying only a Gladstone bag. She is a trustee of Women’s Adventure Expo and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Her treks include Mount Kilimanjaro, Inca Trail, Tour du Mont Blanc, and cycling in France and Italy. She has presented stories of women adventurers at the Women of the World Festival, Globetrotters Club, The Women’s Institute and schools. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, France magazine, the Washington Post and New Internationalist.

Keynote: Nellie Bly in the sky

Crusading journalist Nellie Bly raced through a ‘man’s world’ — alone and literally with the clothes on her back — to beat the fictional record set by Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days. She won the race on 25 January 1890 and became a global celebrity. 125 years later, Rosemary set out to follow in her footsteps around the world. They both travelled alone with one small case. Nellie went by ocean liner and train. Rosemary flew. Nellie raced, Rosemary didn’t. They both covered around 22,000 miles, and finished with book-length memories and profound appreciation for the kindness shown to them everywhere they went. To this day, Nellie Bly is known as one of the world’s top 10 female adventurers.

Dr Alicia Colson FRGS is an archaeologist and an ethnohistorian with a PhD (McGill) and BA (Hons.) from the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. She’s also a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths (London) and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society as well as the Explorers Club. She trained in academic, government, and governmental organizations in the non-profit sector in the UK, Canada and the US. She is fluent in four languages and has undertaken extensive fieldwork in Canada, the UK, US, and Antigua. She has worked as an archaeologist on rock art sites, habitation sites, human remains as well as burial mounds. She was Chief Scientist for the Craters and Canyons Namibia in 2014 with the British Exploring Society. Her research interests include: hunter-gatherers of the Boreal Forest, digital humanities, archaeological theory, history of archaeology, and sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently developing projects in various places globally with colleagues and is engaged in series of research and publishing projects in cognate fields.

Penelope Foreman is an archaeologist with a specialism in the Neolithic, the pursuit of which has taken her wild camping and adventuring across much of northern Europe. She is currently finishing her PhD on the use of colour in Neolithic monuments. In her professional role as a community archaeologist for the Unloved Heritage project in Wales, she focuses on the impact being engaged with heritage has on wellbeing and outcomes for marginalised groups. To do this she explores landscapes through excavation, the creative arts, and psychogeography. She has been an adventurer since childhood, growing up in the woods of Yorkshire, and is happiest wild swimming or running unexplored paths. Her passions include exploring industrial archaeology, museum tea rooms, and developing inclusive and innovative practice to make heritage accessible to all.

Keynote: Dr Alicia Colson and Penelope Foreman: Pioneering women in archaeology

Archaeology requires its practitioners to explore the archaeological record globally to investigate the study of humanity’s past. It involves pushing the frontiers of exploration, science, ideas, methods, theories and techniques and for women being ‘baddass’ like Gertrude Bell challenging the status quo socially and professionally. Archaeology’s forgotten women are presented on timelines among their peers and contemporaries from the beginning of the profession, in the 19th century to the present day.

Problems exist despite growing numbers of female students and becoming a female profession in the 21st century. A clear gender imbalance exists in the achievement of permanent employment (particularly in academia), access to career progression, and in the achievement of higher-level positions and pay. Today’s female archaeologists suffer from discrimination: their achievements are not recognised, they are passed over for certain “manly” roles, or have shortcomings in access to basic facilities and equipment. These are compounded by being a member of a minority, women of colour, people who identify as LGBTQ, having a disability or long term illness. We’ll hear stories of women across these groups tell their stories of exploration and achievement.

Vanessa Heggie is a historian of science, technology and medicine based at the University of Birmingham. She has published on a wide range of subjects, from public health in Victorian Britain to sex testing in the twenty-first century; her first book ‘A History of British Sports Medicine’ came out in 2011 with Manchester University Press, and her second’ Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration’ will be coming out soon with the University of Chicago Press. She is currently working on projects relating to wilderness and emergency medicine, indigenous technologies, and (unrelatedly) antimicrobial resistance. She was also the co-author of a long running science blog for the Guardian: the H-Word (2012-2017).

Keynote: Two Lost women of scientific exploration (and how not to find others)

Vanessa has recently written a book on the history of extreme physiology and exploration; this talk is the story of how she discovered two women involved in scientific expeditions whose role had been hidden. Having previously stated that no women were involved in British high-altitude science before c.1970, towards the end of her research vanessa came across Nea Morin, known already as a pioneering female climber, but less well known as a participant in a cardiological study in the Himalayan region, as her name was left out of the scientific papers. At the same time Vanessa realised that an author of an important analysis of cold adaptation in Antarctica was also a woman; although she did her work from an office in Bristol her skills were crucial to processing complex data from the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The story of how these women were lost, and found, will help us find others.

Mrs Shane Winser heads Geography Outdoors: the Royal Geographical Society’s centre supporting field research, exploration and outdoor learning which provides advice, information and training to some 1,500 plus scientific, educational, and adventurous expeditions each year. A zoology graduate with a postgraduate diploma in Information Science, she assisted in the planning and organisation of the RGS’s own research programmes to the tropical forests of Sarawak and Brunei, the mountains of the Karakoram, and the drylands of western Australia, Kenya and Oman. She chairs the BSI technical panel for British Standard BS 8848: 2014 the specification which benchmarks good practice for the provision of visits, fieldwork, expeditions and adventurous activities outside the United Kingdom. Shane has also written and edited many books and articles on various aspects of expedition planning, and the history of exploration, and is Editor of the Expedition Handbook (Profile Books, 2004) and one of the editors of the Oxford Handbook of Expedition and Wilderness Medicine (OUP, 2015). Awards include the Royal Geographical Society’s Mrs Patrick Ness Award and the Mungo Park Award of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

Jessica Pearson

After becoming ill at the age of 15, Jess started to use film as a way of communicating. A rare autoimmune illness called Myasthenia Gravis, caused paralysis in her face, mouth, tongue and throat. For many years Jess was unable to speak, which lead to her exploration of communicating through film. Jess’ condition is mostly stable and her passion is to use film to communicate other people’s stories. “Before my illness, I had wanted to be an actress, I was lucky that I also really loved art and had been experimenting with film. Filming slowly took the place of my acting. I was able to act and communicate through abstract films without the pressure of speaking and having an audience. Film then developed over many years into a passion and when I could speak again I started to use film to help other people communicate. Since starting Shimnix Films, in 2013, I have focused my work on promoting, artisans, musicians, dancers, performers, artists and adventurers.”

Film: An interview with Myrtle Simpson - A truly remarkable adventurer.

Last year, 2017, I had the pleasure of interviewing Myrtle Simpson. My questions were directed at her family life and how she still adventures at the age of 87. She had a really strong message to say about how we perceive the elderly and that society needs to change their opinion of the potential achievements that can be gained from someone who is seen to be frail and vulnerable. Myrtle had some great advice about utilising technically designed lighter kit and not giving up on your active passions. Myrtle also explained that her children grew up experiencing the most incredible adventures, “I wanted to keep my family together, so of course they should come with us on the adventures.” Even when the adventures were seen to be too demanding for young children, Myrtle and Hugh Simpson made sure they were still a part of the adventure, by travelling as a family to the closest country located to Myrtle and Hughes expedition, often with a teacher so that the children did not lose out on education. Even so they came up against criticism, however, this did not change their mindset to keep their family together and create the most amazing memories.

This short film is a part of a bigger film called The Space Outside - Knowledge and Wisdom, which can be found at shimnixfilms.co.uk

Elise Wortley

Last year, just after my 28th birthday, I finally felt able to attempt the first stage of an idea I first dreamt up 12 years earlier: to follow in the footsteps of pioneering female explorer Alexandra David-Neel. I’d felt a need to follow in Alexandra’s footsteps, ever since I first read her famous book ‘My Journey to Lhasa’ when I was 16. What I didn’t know at the time, was that her words “I vow to show what the will of a woman can do” were to shape the journey I’ve taken through life, and Alexandra was to become the female role model I needed, that I hadn’t yet found through my early years of education. My aim with this project is to highlight the achievements of women within exploration and to show that women are, and always have been at the forefront of shaping adventure. It was important for me to highlight the roles of female mountain guides, in an industry which for cultural reasons is traditionally a male profession, especially across the Himalaya. I hope that this film inspires other women to push themselves out of their comfort zones and take on a challenge, whatever that may be to them. This is why it was so important to me to keep the whole team female.

Film: Women with Altitude: In the footsteps of Alexndra David-Néel

In late 2017, with an all-female team in tow, Elise set out into the Indian Himalaya to begin her journey following in the footsteps of legendary female explorer Alexandra David Néel. Elise first read Alexandra’s famous book My Journey to Lhasa when she was 16, and could never get her story - and what she managed to achieve - out of her head. Alexandra had incredible strength, physically and mentally, to journey through Asia for 14 years, but even more so to be able to walk away from her comfortable life in Europe. Elise decided that, in order do her journey justice, and to fully experience the elements as Alexandra did, she would carry and wear exactly what a traveller would have in the early 1900s. This means no modern trekking equipment whatsoever! Elise’s film is about facing fears, following role models, and pursuing ideas, as well as inspiring other woman to push their own boundaries, whatever they may be.

Through this project we have been raising money for women’s charity Freedom Kit Bags who supply reusable and environmentally friendly sanitary products to women and girls in low-income and rural areas of Nepal. You can donate a Freedom Kit Bag here: www.womanwithaltitude.com