20 March 2025
Students offered new insights on walking tour
The Women of Westminster initiative saw a group of King’s students given a guided tour of the memorials and statues located around the city.
Organised by the Women of London, the walk took place on 19 March and saw the group tour a number of locations around Westminster while learning about the women honoured there.
The students learned about the contributions made by women to literature (Agatha Christie), nursing (Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole), humanity in times of war (Edith Cavell), women's suffrage (Emmeline Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett), and UK politics in general.
Dr Isabelle Hertner, convenor of the European gender politics module at King’s, said: “We also discussed how the memorials chose to represent these famous women. They all reflect a certain zeitgeist, and some have aged better than others. I think we all liked Millicent Fawcett's statue on Parliament Square, as it stands out amongst the male crowd in its level of detail, the message on the bronze banner that Fawcett holds, and the photos of the names and images of 59 women and four men who supported women's suffrage at the time.
“This got us talking about the value of feminist walks - not just in London, but also, in Manchester, Paris, or Rome - some of the places that my students are from.”
The walk was funded through the School of Politics and Economics Opportunity Fund, which launched this academic year. Other successful applicants from the first round of funding include:
- Casey Collins (new publication)
- Haotian Gu (graduate recruitment event)
- Jiya Desai and Anaya Angal (London art business event)
- Matilde Girolami and Riad Ghoneim (portraits from student spaces initiative)
- Petr Torkanovskiy and Iris Magne (a research symposium)
- Sumire Egami (careers and development podcast)
- Nasim Ali (a new student forum)
In this story
Senior Lecturer in Politics of Britain in Europe