A Lady’s Guide to Mapping Feminist Memory
In this post, Master Student Alice Lemaitre, now studying for her M2 through our distance learning programme, recounts her experience as an intern on the Sites of Feminist Memory project, led by Dr Calvini-Lefebvre, for the LERMA (UR 853), amU.
For the past two years, I have had the opportunity to be part of the Sites of Feminist Memory project, which aims to create a collaborative map of memorials around the world dedicated to women’s suffrage. This citizen science project combines historical research with community engagement and digital outreach. My time on the project, through two consecutive internships, has taught me a great deal about the challenges and rewards of working at the intersection of science, society, and public history.
When I began my first internship in early 2024, I was relatively new to the world of citizen science. I had a strong academic interest in linguistics, but I wanted to broaden my horizons. Under the guidance of Marc Calvini-Lefebvre, I learned how to use tools like Framacarte and Limesurvey, and I quickly became involved in both the content and communication aspects of the project.

One of the central aspects of my work has been creating content for social media. From designing Instagram posts to launching the project’s TikTok account (@herstorymaps), I focused on making historical research on feminism accessible and engaging for a wide audience. For the “Six Weeks for Suffrage” campaigns, I created posts that invited users to submit new sites of feminist memory for inclusion on the map. This initiative was especially meaningful because it embodied the project’s core aim: building knowledge with society rather than just for it. Not making this project accessible to everyone felt unthinkable to me, because I truly believe it can have a positive long-term impact on society. The names, faces, and stories of suffragettes and suffragists help make the struggle for women’s right to vote far less abstract: it’s no longer just an anecdote mentioned in middle school, high school, or university classes, but the real-life history of writers, politicians, scientists, teachers, and many others who fought, and made a difference in the world.
Working on these campaigns taught me the importance, and difficulty, of visibility in digital spaces. While we saw encouraging engagement, especially on TikTok, it was not always easy to generate responses or contributions from the public. Despite our efforts, including contacting similar Instagram accounts and emailing potential contributors, the campaigns showed me the limits of social media as a tool for outreach. It takes more than good content to create meaningful interaction.
Beyond communication, I also worked on more technical aspects of the project. I added over 100 new locations to the map, standardizing data from a variety of sources including user submissions, online research, and lists compiled by previous interns. The process of checking, cleaning, and inputting this data gave me valuable insight into how digital history projects manage information, and how important structure and consistency are when working collaboratively across time and teams.
My role evolved significantly during my second internship in 2025. I had a clearer understanding of the project’s needs, which allowed me to work more autonomously and focus on refining processes that I had helped initiate the year before. For example, I modified the templates and tutorials that I created in 2024 to help future interns navigate the workflow, including guides on using Canva, scheduling Instagram posts, etc. I wanted to make the onboarding process smoother for the next person in my position, just as I had benefited from the advice of the previous intern.
A particularly enriching part of the experience was the collaborative work I did with Marc Calvini-Lefebvre, and my teammate Blanche Plaquevent, the
project’s postdoctoral fellow. Regular meetings with Blanche and Marc helped us stay coordinated and gave us space to brainstorm and adjust our approach as the project evolved. These sessions were not just about assigning tasks, they were opportunities to reflect on what was working, what was not, and how we could improve. They also taught me how to work productively in a small but motivated team, balancing individual initiative with collective goals.
Looking back, what stands out most is how much I have learned, not only about digital tools, feminist history, and citizen science, but about communication, teamwork, and the realities of trying to engage the public in academic research. I have seen first-hand how making research accessible is both an ethical obligation and a complex challenge. Creating content that is informative, inclusive (for example, by writing Instagram descriptions that are accessible to blind people), and engaging requires time, care, and a deep understanding of your audience. Visibility and participation do not happen automatically, they must be earned through consistent, thoughtful effort.
Overall, these two internships have shown me how research can exist outside the walls of the university and make a difference in public understanding. Projects like Sites of Feminist Memory demonstrate that history is not just a collection of facts, but a living narrative that can be shaped, shared, and expanded by the community. I’m proud to have contributed to that effort, and I hope that the work I have done will help others carry the project forward, there is still so much to be done.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Laurence Lux-Sterritt (7 juillet 2025). A Lady’s Guide to Mapping Feminist Memory. EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14af5



