2026
My name is Dr Cathy Hunt. I have a background in adult education and was a senior lecturer in history at Coventry University. Since 2016 I have worked as an independent historian, writing, publishing, curating and giving talks to museums, libraries, trade unions and history groups. I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021.
My PhD explored the involvement of women in trade unionism and local politics in the early 20th century and featured the life and work of a Coventry politician called Alice Arnold (1881-1955), one of two of the city’s first women councillors. I have written a short biography of this remarkable pioneer, details of which can be found on the Bookshop section of this website.
Much of my work is about people’s lives in Britain in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. I am fascinated by the details of daily living and the different paths that we take, sometimes through free choice, very often through circumstance. Some of my published work focuses on the often unrecorded details of women’s lives, including employment and the struggle to improve working conditions and pay, particularly in the early 20th century. I am the author of a book about the National Federation of Women Workers, which was the first all women general trade union in Britain (1906-21). It was led by the charismatic Mary Macarthur and in 2019 my biography of her was published.
To commemorate the 100th year since Mary Macarthur’s death in 1921, I curated an online exhibition for the Trade Union Congress, which can be seen here https://www.tuc.org.uk/MaryMacarthur
Where possible, I am keen to look at history from a local perspective. For many years I was based in Coventry and there I was involved in many different projects and initiatives, including the publication of a book about all aspects of women’s lives in the city between 1850 and 1950. More details of my publications can be found on the website (Some of my work and publications).
I have now moved to Yorkshire where I am settling in and starting to work on new projects. My most recent research was on an extraordinary woman from Yorkshire, who was, in the first half of the 20th century, a Labour county councillor, a Poor Law Guardian, a women’s suffrage supporter, a Women’s Land Army organiser and an education campaigner. She also happened to be a member of one of the richest aristocratic families in England, the Fitzwilliams of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham. You can find a series of posts about the public life of Lady Mabel Smith (1870-1951) on this website.
Follow me on FaceBook @Cathy Hunt Historian or Blue Sky @CathyHunt
