The Hypatia Trust

The Hypatia Trust ✨Visible. Strong. Collaborative✨
advancing cross platform women's equality
📚 Visit our specialist ‘Women in Word’ bookshop in Penzance 📚

We support and promote women’s achievements through research and documentation, exhibition, publication and by providing training and educational activity.

The Hypatia Trust welcomes Heather Marks to work in our space and present to our community about Working With and Agains...
25/08/2026

The Hypatia Trust welcomes Heather Marks to work in our space and present to our community about Working With and Against the Archives as part of our Who Makes History Residency Series curated in grateful collaboration with .

Film screening and talk: Saturday, 29 August. Doors at 6.30pm, screening at 7pm.

Artist, writer and researcher Heather Marks shares her practice exploring fragmented histories held within archives. 

The event includes a screening of Fugitives in the Archive (2024), a moving image that surfaces the little known history of people escaping slavery in 18th century Britain. Moving between English and Efik, the film follows one such runaway through the archive in a poetic meditation on fugitivity then and now. 

Heather will also share an early listening of a new soundscape developed through her residency at the National Portrait Gallery. The work responds to portraits of Global Majority sitters produced in Britain between the 16th and mid-19th centuries in a polyphonic dialogue both archival and ancestral, as she reflects on the interiority of these sitters and the grief that comes with the limits of what we know.

Fugitives in the Archive (2024)
 
March 14, 1769. Ran away on Wednesday Night last, from his Master Patrick Burk, Esq; A Young Negro Man, called Jeremiah.
 
Fugitives in the Archive (2024) is a short film that meditates on the young people of African and Asian descent who ran away from enslavement in Britain in the 17th to early 19th century. For many, the only trace left of them in archives are the advertisements announcing their escape, published by those who sought to capture them.
 
The film picks up the trail of one specific runaway, a young man named Jeremiah Rowland, who sought his freedom in 1769. Through a bilingual (English, Efik) assemblage of movement, found footage and archival fragments, Fugitives in the Archive invites you into a dreamspace to meditate on the lives of these undocumented freedom-seekers, past and present, and to consider fugitivity as an ontology that asks what exists beyond the archive’s limits. 
 
Fugitives in the Archive was a Spike Island 2024 Digital Commission, funded by the W

Help shape the future of our women’s archive, community space and bookshop at The Hypatia Trust For three decades The Hy...
19/08/2026

Help shape the future of our women’s archive, community space and bookshop at The Hypatia Trust

For three decades The Hypatia Trust has been recording, gathering and honouring the lives and work of women in Cornwall, and beyond, building an archive and library, running a bookshop, and creating a space where women’s work, lives, diversity, and creativity are taken seriously and celebrated joyously.

We are looking for people to join us with interest or experience in the following areas:

-Board members

-Archive and collections

-Bookshop

-Community engagement and events

-Digital content creation

Our board of trustees oversees our charity’s mission and strategy. Its members bring both creativity and constructive support to our work. Previous experience, especially experience with governance, financial planning and management, and fundraising, as well as previous experience of leadership in the charitable sector would be an asset. But what matters most is your commitment to our charity’s cause and eagerness to play an important role in shaping our future.

Our volunteers are passionate about women’s stories and histories and enjoy sharing them by selling books in our bookshop, writing for our newsletter or website, assisting with our library and archive, and helping at our events and workshops. You will join a vibrant community of women helping to make women’s lives and work more visible, in Cornwall and beyond.

Interested?

Join us on one of our Open Archive Wednesdays (noon to 3pm) or at an upcoming event.
You can also find out more on our website or send us a DM here.

Photo 1 from our collections with 📸 credit to Cat Belshaw
Photo 2 from the launch of Library Obscura with with 📸 credit to elle
Photo 3 from our exhibition of Greenham Common ephemera from our archive with 📸 credit to Cat Belshaw

Totes for sale in our The Hypatia Trust bookshop! Thank you Elusive Press - Screen Print 💚Proceeds from every tote go to...
04/08/2026

Totes for sale in our The Hypatia Trust bookshop!

Thank you Elusive Press - Screen Print 💚

Proceeds from every tote go towards our charitable work!

Visit our bookshop in Penzance Wednesdays to Saturdays from noon to 3pm

Every book is a beach read if you’re reading on the beach—Thank you, Cornwall ☀️Find your next read The Hypatia Trust bo...
04/08/2026

Every book is a beach read if you’re reading on the beach—Thank you, Cornwall ☀️

Find your next read The Hypatia Trust bookshop, just steps down a lovely lane off Chapel Street in the heart of Penzance.

For the month of August all used paperbacks are 50p!

We’re open Wednesdays to Saturdays noon to 3pm.

All proceeds go towards our work as a charity, celebrating and sharing women’s work, lives and stories.

“Undervalued, Underpaid and Feminised. What the Theory of Social Reproduction Can Teach Us About Women’s Unpaid Labours....
16/07/2026

“Undervalued, Underpaid and Feminised. What the Theory of Social Reproduction Can Teach Us About Women’s Unpaid Labours.”

A talk featuring Dr. Maud Perrier, University of Bristol.

Tuesday, 21 July
7:00pm to 9:00pm

Tickets at the door / PWYC (suggested donation 10)

In this talk Maud Perrier explains what is Social Reproduction Theory and how it helps understand why Care work remains undervalued, underpaid and feminised. Drawing on her research with activist working-class mothers and care worker organizers as well as nineteenth century socialist experiments, and working with examples of childcare workers in Australia and the UK, Maud explores how underpaid care workers have fought for better rights and how we as a society can organise care more fairly.

Maud’s work illustrates how Social Reproduction Theory has inspired ambitious feminist movements that disrupt the classed racialized and gendered divisions of reproductive labour for more than 200 years. Social Reproduction Theory gives us a conceptual roadmap for organizing against the extraction of profits from care work and for reimagining the organization of care and reproductive work.

The talk will help you think about your own unpaid, and maybe paid, care work at home. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussions. Maud has researched paid careworkers in different countries and written about maternal work and care work. Her latest book is called Childcare Struggles, Maternal Workers and Social Reproduction

You are invited.Rooms of Her Own: The Hypatia Trust 30th Anniversary CelebrationFriday, 24 July6:30pm to 9:00pm The Hypa...
16/07/2026

You are invited.

Rooms of Her Own: The Hypatia Trust 30th Anniversary Celebration
Friday, 24 July
6:30pm to 9:00pm

The Hypatia Trust

Free (suggested donation £10). All proceeds will go towards securing the future of The Hypatia Trust.

Please RSVP to [email protected]

Join us for a joyous celebration of Melissa Hardie-Budden and her legacy in The Hypatia Trust.

The event will feature special guests Melinda James, Jane Griffiths, Penny Florence, Rupam Baoni, and more. We will share stories from Melissa’s life, our shared history, and The Hypatia Trust’s archive, collection and publications — a chance for reflection on why now, more than ever, preserving “rooms of our own” remains a wildly radical and necessary act.

Food Innovations in Plymouth Friday 10 July 11-00-14.00Free talk | Drop-in Come and meet the research team from Plymouth...
30/06/2026

Food Innovations in Plymouth
 
Friday 10 July
11-00-14.00
Free talk | Drop-in
 
Come and meet the research team from Plymouth. Join in interactive, fun, creative activities to learn about FoodSEqual Plymouth, hosted by our community food researchers - including insights on the journey of our Plymouth Fish Finger project and our local fruit and vegetable voucher scheme pilot. The Plymouth Fish Finger is a community led innovation which brought together multiple local partners to ‘co-design’ a healthy and sustainable product that improves access to fish and supports the livelihoods of small vessel fishers. Browse through our photos and flyers; watch our animation; create a food zine/collage; and meet the Community Researchers involved in the food projects and ask them about their roles, challenges and achievements.

What is Community Research? Thursday 9 July 18.00–19.00Free talk | Booking recommended This talk brings together communi...
30/06/2026

What is Community Research?
 
Thursday 9 July

18.00–19.00
Free talk | Booking recommended
 
This talk brings together community researchers and academics involved in our five-year food research project. Through presentations and discussion, speakers will reflect on their experiences of participatory action research, co-production and collaborative knowledge-making. What happens when communities are not simply research participants, but researchers themselves? How can academic and community knowledge work together? What challenges and possibilities emerge through long-term collaboration and how might they work in your own contexts?
 
Speakers include Dr Elaine Swan, Reader in Feminist Food Studies at the University of Sussex and PI of the UKRI-funded Food Lives project. Shazna Hussian, Community Researcher at the Women’s Environmental Network. Dr Jessica Horne, Research Fellow at the University of Sussex.
 
This talk is free, with a suggested donation of £5 for the Hypatia Trust, and an extra donation for a glass of wine and snacks.

Women’s Domestic Food Work: Pleasure or Chore?   Talk and discussion Wednesday 8 July  19.00–20.00Free | Booking recomme...
30/06/2026

Women’s Domestic Food Work: Pleasure or Chore?  
 
Talk and discussion

Wednesday 8 July 
19.00–20.00
Free | Booking recommended
Suggested donation £5
 
This evening talk explores the intersections of feminism and food, asking how food practices, labour and activism shape everyday life.
 
Drawing on research from a five-year community food project, this interactive talk explores women’s experiences of food work and the complex relationship between care, labour and pleasure in everyday life. We explore the intersections of feminism and food, asking how food practices, labour and activism shape everyday life.
 
Speakers include Dr Elaine Swan, Reader in Feminist Food Studies at the University of Sussex and PI of the UKRI-funded Food Lives project. Shazna Hussian, Community Researcher at the Women’s Environmental Network. Dr Jessica Horne, Research Fellow at the University of Sussex.
 
This talk is free, with a suggested donation of £5 for the Hypatia Trust, and an extra donation for a glass of wine and snacks.

Address

Lower Ground Floor, The Regent, 54 Chapel Street
Penzance
TR184AE

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 3pm
Thursday 11am - 3pm
Friday 11am - 3pm
Saturday 12pm - 3pm

Website

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