Beckie Rutherford is an RHS Centenary Fellow, 2022-23, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Beckie’s six-month fellowship will run from October 2022 to March 2023.

As a Centenary Fellow, Beckie will complete her Warwick University PhD entitled ‘Disabled Women Organising: Rethinking Agency within British Liberation Movements, 1976-2000’.  Her research illuminates the neglected histories of three grassroots disabled women’s groups, plus the pioneering work of disabled women artists and writers. Beckie’s thesis demonstrates the centrality of disabled women’s narratives to the broader landscape of liberation politics in modern Britain. It advocates a creative understanding of activist histories, accounting for the agency, and diversity uncovered within stories of disabled women organising.