‘In the Service of Others Her Life Was Spent’: Re-Creating the Humanitarian Life of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson

Melanie Oppenheimer

doi:10.1080/14780038.2022.2116763

‘In the Service of Others Her Life Was Spent’: Re-Creating the Humanitarian Life of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson

Melanie Oppenheimer^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article takes the intersection of biography and humanitarianism to explore the life of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson who played a significant leadership role in women’s activism in Britain in the early twentieth century including the Red Cross in Scotland and Australia. The paper explores the problems of constructing a biographical narrative of a leading female humanitarian when there is no personal collection or memoir and limited sources. How do organisational records affect our interpretation and what role does gender play? Could speculative biography help in bringing to life a woman of note but lost to time?.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	385-403
Number of pages	19
Journal	Cultural and Social History
Volume	20
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2022.2116763
Publication status	Published - 2023

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10.1080/14780038.2022.2116763

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‘In the Service of Others Her Life Was Spent’: Re-Creating the Humanitarian Life of Lady Helen Munro Ferguson

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