Laurel Forster

As a Reader in Cultural History at the University of Portsmouth, my research interests are in women's cultures, print media and feminism, particularly across the long twentieth century. My publications are on the representation of women in a range of media including film, television and radio, and on women's writing. including the work of May Sinclair, and other modernist writers.

I am particularly interested in the way periodicals and magazines serve women's political and personal aspirations.

Magazines, lifestyle television, television drama, novels, short stories and science fiction are all media forms and genres which interest me and have informed my writing.

Recent publications include work on feminism and women’s magazines; modernism and 1970s British television. I have completed a monograph on women’s magazines, called Magazine Movements, which examines the political and social impact some magazines have had on British women’s history. I have co-edited a large volume of essays on women’s print media called Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s to 2000s. Currently I am preparing a second monograph on women's creative cultures and the media.