Angelina Palmén

I am a postdoctoral research fellow studying the intersection between social and cultural history and economic and business history, with a special focus on modern European Jewish history. My interests include gender and women’s history, feminism, visual culture, the histories of work and consumption, and the digital humanities. I am affiliated with the historical research and digitisation project Gender and Work (GaW) led by Professor Maria Ågren.

I received my BA, MA, and PhD (2024) from the University of Oxford. I have held the Leo Baeck fellowship in German-Jewish history from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and Leo Baeck Institute, London (2018–2019), the Posen foundation fellowship in Jewish History, Society, and Culture (2018–2020), and the Dr Sophie Bookhalter research fellowship at the Center for Jewish History, New York (2021–2022). My doctoral dissertation, “Producing New Women: Work, Consumer Culture and Jewish Clothing Companies in Wilhelmine Germany,” shortlisted for the Coleman Prize for Best Dissertation by the Association of Business Historians, presents original research dealing with the involvement of Jewish commercial clothiers in the promotion of the women’s movement and feminist ideals in turn-of-the-century Berlin (link below).

My postdoctoral project at Uppsala university examines the activism of Jewish women in Stockholm and Berlin in the early twentieth century through the lenses of intersectionality and social entrepreneurship. It considers more broadly the mechanisms of societal modernisation, questioning conventional androcentric narratives that privilege macro-level, top-down and ethno-nationalist-influenced perspectives. Taking the activities of social work pioneers Alice Salomon and Gerda Meyerson (c. 1900–1920s) as my specific starting point, I explore Jewish women’s roles as reformers and pioneers in modernising European urban centres, as I pursue a feminist reframing of women’s historical philanthropic or voluntary activities through the language of entrepreneurship.