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

[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.

[penitentmoomin]

"Would a hippy boarding school like Bedales be good enough for Oxbridge in the 70s? "

Easily. In the early '80s I went to Oxford from a state-funded (i.e. non fee paying) Catholic girls' grammar school. I was not unusual in that. It was an era of greater social mobility than the present. I sat the "4th term" entrance exam, as described in the comment by "Anonymous" of September 26 2016, 20:37:16 UTC. Poorer students would have been more likely to take this route since it did not involve any special arrangements. After taking the exam I simply continued to study for my A-Levels.

"Eugenics was still a thing and women were more scarce both in teaching and the student body in Oxbridge (to the point of separate colleges, even) "Eugenics was long gone, killed off by its association with the Nazi atrocities. I never once heard it mentioned. The student body was vociferously anti-Thatcher, but other than that soft left on average, with room for some deeply eccentric views on both sides. At least that's how it seemed to me - I don't

[sian_shoe]

thank you very much for the frank reply! As someone mentioned upthread, my mind was elsewhere with eugenics (but I'd argue eugenics was very much still a thing in the 70s, thanks to forced sterilizations etc) since I was thinking of old dons who believed in that waffle for a character.

[syntinen_laulu]

I'd argue eugenics was very much still a thing in the 70s, thanks to forced sterilizations etcIn the USA, yes; in the UK, no. Over here, even in 1945 there were still eminent men like the economist John Maynard Keynes who were prepared to push for legislation to allow compulsory sterilisation (something that was never overtly legal in Britain as such, though it had been done on various medical grounds), but their efforts were defeated. And as the ghastly record of the Nazi eugenicist policies started to be uncovered, eugenics as a principle and forced sterilisation as a policy became wholly discredited. There would be occasional legal and parliamentary wrangles about individual mentally-disabled girls whose parents or carers felt that the risk of their being sexually exploited and impregnated, an event they might not understand and which would leave them with a child they couldn't possibly be competent to rear, was so great that they needed to be sterilised for their own good. But the notion of it being done 'for the good of society'

[philo7]

My thoughts entirely, syntinen_laulu, which is why I posted below at the same time as you!

The OP is British from their profile, though, which is why I was even more surprised and asked for clarification/info...

[corvideye]

For flavor, you could try the movie the Paper Chase, set in 1973. It's set at law school, but it gives the flavor of rebellious students vs. the stodgy older academe.

edit - although it is set in the US so that may not help.