Sources on Oxbridge life life during the 60s/70s for a female academic.

[sian_shoe]

The era I am setting my story in is vaguely 70s and vaguely Oxbridge, and my main character is a post PHD researcher stuck in a small museum similar to the Pitt Rivers, doing grunt work and going through that awful “so what now” grey dirge that happens post education in your mid 20s.
There's a discovery of 112 letters set in a psuedo medieval land,

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

(1) Academically they're obviously very important. In terms of wider culture, how much interest is there in that period? Do they contain anything new and exciting? Do they have links to some popular history area that everyone has heard of and can provide a 'hook'? They sound a bit like the Paston letters, so interesting for people who like that kind of thing, and might well get a Radio 4 programme about them or something, but not going to set the rest of the world alight unless there is something that makes them different and exciting to lots of people.

(2) I don't think that "eugenics" was still a thing in British universities in the 1970s! Do you mean some other word? Sexism and racism, certainly, reflective of general society. Female academics and students were very much present, but they were also very much a sub-group, and perhaps more so at Oxbridge, due to the dominance of all-male colleges, than at other universities. Compared to today, staying in academia would be more challenging for married women than men, because of lack of things like maternity leave and childcare. I work in a British university and we have far fewer female academics in their 60s/50s than male ones because they lost the opportunities 30 years ago when they had children or simply didn't get jobs because men were favoured. Women still face sexism in academia today, but the ratios (at least in my subject areas) are a lot less skewed in the 40 - 20 bracket than the older generation (of course, this brings its own challenges outside the scope of your question!).

(5) If you haven't read AS Byatt's Possession you might find it relevant. Also David Lodge's campus novels set in the 70s and early 80s - they're comic, but they do acknowledge sexism and racism as issues. They're not set at Oxford, but a Birmingham analogue, but I think they are still relevant.

[sian_shoe]

Sexism and racism is what I meant yes, I bring it up as many Oxford don types believed in it at the time, my mind wandered to Tolkein when I was writing this.

and goddamn having read the synopsis of Possession I am sighing somewhat angrily as it's a very, very similar idea. Arghrghrghrgrh.