Sophie Turbutt

Turbutt is an early-career historian of the anarchist movement in Spain. During her LAHRI Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship at Leeds (2025-6), she will develop a new research project exploring love and ageing among Spanish anarchists from the late nineteenth century until the post-war period.

Turbutt completed her PhD in the School of History at the University of Leeds in 2025, researching interwar Spanish anarchism and gender. Her thesis, funded by WRoCAH (Arts and Humanities Research Council), was titled ‘Comradeship, Gender, and the Making of Anarchist Womanhood in Spain, c.1923-1939’. She completed her BA in History at the University of York between 2016 and 2020, and included within that an Erasmus year abroad at the Complutense University of Madrid. Turbutt subsequently completed an MPhil in Modern European History at the University of Cambridge from 2020 to 2021. In 2022, she completed a Visiting Doctoral Researcher placement at the Complutense University of Madrid, and in 2023 was a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She has also conducted archival research elsewhere in Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK during her PhD.

In 2022, Turbutt worked as a Research Assistant on the project ‘Stigma and Shame? Challenging Menstrual Taboo Through Time’, led by Dr Katie Carpenter and Dr Rae Gillibrand. From 2024 to 2025, she was a Project Assistant for Kate Dossett’s Developing Healthy Engagement. She also worked as a coding assistant on the Education Outreach-led project I Belong: I Matter in 2025. In September 2024, Turbutt co-organised the Secret Histories international workshop hosted at the University of Leeds, funded by WRoCAH and the GLAM Research Cluster. In June 2022, she co-organised the Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula international symposium hosted at the University of Leeds, funded by WRoCAH and the Past and Present Society. Turbutt is a co-founder of the Red Europea de Historia Contemporánea Española (REHCE) and was a co-organiser of its inaugural workshop in Edinburgh in 2023.

Turbutt has also undertaken a 6-week research placement at the Thackray Museum of Medicine (2023) and given a public lecture at Leeds Central Library (2024). She has had appearances on the Sobremesa podcast, Anarchist Book Club podcast, and Anarchist Essays podcast. Turbutt is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Qualifications:

PhD History, MPhil Modern European History, BA History with a Year Abroad 

Publications

Turbutt, Sophie. (2024), ‘Sexual Revolution and the Spanish Anarchist Press: Bodies, Birth Control and Free Love in the 1930s Advice Columns of La Revista Blanca’, Contemporary European History, 33:1, pp.338-356. 

Newmark, Joshua and Turbutt, Sophie. (2023), ‘Introduction: Twentieth Century Anarchism in the Iberian Peninsula’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 29:3, pp.295-299. 

Conferences and Presentations

08/07/2025: ‘Intimacy and the making of anarchist comradeship in interwar Spain’, Social History Society annual conference, Black Country Living Museum 

10/07/2024: ‘Emotions and Gender in Radical Friendships: The Transnational Networks of Spanish Anarchist Women’, Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies annual conference, University of Lisbon 

25/06/2024: ‘Emotions and Gender in Radical Friendships: The Transnational Networks of Spanish Anarchist Women’, School of History PGR Seminar, University of Leeds 

18/07/2023: ‘La moral sexual anarquista: Reivindicaciones a la autoridad y la regeneración social (1931-1939)’, New Directions in Modern Spanish History: A PGR/ECR Workshop, University of Edinburgh 

18/05/2023: ‘Anarchist Social Life in Catalonia: intimacies, parenthoods/childhoods, friendships and workplaces’, Catalan Studies PGR/ECR Symposium, University of Sheffield 

22/03/2023: ‘Women, Activism, and Relational Identity-Making in Spanish Anarchist Political Culture, 1923-1939’, Modern History Research Colloquium, University of Bern 

27/01/2023: ‘Identity-making in the anarchist family: intimate relationships and parent-child relationships in the Spanish anarchist movement c.1923-1939’, Family and Marriage in Twentieth Century Spain Workshop, University of Leeds 

10/09/2022: ‘Anarchist Womanhood: A Relational Approach to the Intersection Between Sexual/Gender Identity and Political Identity in 1920s-30s Spain’, Modern Spanish History Conference, University of Kent 

15/10/2021: ‘Constructing Anarchist Womanhood: La Revista Blanca, 1923-1936’, Modern Spanish History Seminar, Universities of Edinburgh and Kent (Online) 

07/07/2021: ‘Female Bodily Autonomy in the Spanish Anarchist Periodical, La Revista Blanca (1923-1936)’, New Voices and Global Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Periodicals Seminar, Manchester Metropolitan University (Online) 

03/06/2021: ‘Female Bodily Autonomy in La Revista Blanca, 1931-1936’, International Seminar: New Perspectives on Mid-Twentieth Century Spain (1931-1959), Universities of Leeds and Granada (Online)