Dr Elizabeth Dillenburg

Profile

My research focuses on the history of girlhood. My current project examines girls’ culture, labor, and mobility in the British Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My publications include articles and chapters on child migration in the British Empire, girls as empire builders, domestic service in South Africa and New Zealand, and women’s suffrage in Minnesota. I teach courses on the history of childhood, colonialism, gender, and Europe.

Research

Publications

Dillenburg, Elizabeth. “Long Teaching Module: Exploring Empire through the Lens of Childhood and Gender,” World History Commons, March 31, 2022, https://worldhistorycommons.org/long-teaching-module-exploring-empire-through-lens-childhood-and-gender.

Dillenburg, Elizabeth. “Girl Empire Builders: Girls’ Domestic and Cultural Labor and the Constructions of Girlhoods.” In “The History of Girlhoods and the Girling of Work, Play, and Performance,” edited by Miriam Forman-Brunell and Diana W. Anselmo, special issue, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 12, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 393-412.

Dillenburg, Elizabeth. “Domestic Servant Debates and the Fault Lines of Empire in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa and New Zealand.” In New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire, edited by Ulrike Lindner and Dörte Lerp, 179-208. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

Dillenburg, Elizabeth. “‘The Opportunity for Empire Building’: The Girls’ Friendly Society, Child Emigration, and Domestic Service in the British Empire.” In International Migrations in the Victorian Era, edited by Marie Ruiz, 456-478. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Expertise