In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating trailblazing paths taken by women whose courage and vision transformed societies. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating trailblazing paths taken by women whose courage and vision transformed societies. This reading list features five biographies that highlight women who resisted systemic barriers, confronted entrenched hierarchies, and fought for the dignity and safety of others. From activists and reformers to scientists and cultural leaders, these stories reveal how women—often overlooked or silenced—have pushed boundaries, protected the vulnerable, and inspired movements for justice. Together, they remind us that progress toward gender equality has always been driven by those who refused to accept the limits imposed on them.
1. A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housingby Betty Boyd Caroli
In this biography, Mary K. Simkhovitch emerges as a pioneering force in the settlement house movement and a central architect of American public housing reform. Betty Boyd Caroli traces Simkhovitch’s founding of Greenwich House in 1902 and her influential role in shaping early 20th‑century urban policy, including her leadership in New Deal housing initiatives, the creation of the National Housing Conference, and co‑authoring the landmark 1937 National Housing Act. Balancing an unconventional marriage, family life, and a relentless public mission, Simkhovitch became widely admired—once even depicted as a “Wonder Woman of History”—for her ability to confront urban poverty while advocating fiercely for immigrant communities and affordable housing. This biography, rich with historical insight, positions her as an enduringly relevant figure whose work helped define the federal government’s responsibility to support low‑income families.
2. American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism by Steven K. Green
American Infidelity traces the dramatic late‑19th‑century clash between a dominant evangelical culture and a rising coalition of freethinkers, feminists, and sexual reformers who sought greater personal liberty and challenged religious authority. Historian Steven K. Green follows this struggle through the activists who fought for birth control, divorce reform, and women’s autonomy, as well as the moral crusaders—including Elizabeth Cady Stanton—who worked to suppress them. Revealing how these “infidels” pushed for a more open, rational, and egalitarian society, Green shows how their movements were ultimately stifled but left a powerful legacy that continues to shape today’s debates over reproductive rights, censorship, and the role of religion in public life.
3. COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black
Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History
This book recounts the often‑overlooked story of Harriet Tubman’s 1863 Combahee River Raid, a daring Civil War operation in which she led Union spies, scouts, and two Black regiments up South Carolina’s river to destroy major rice plantations and liberate 730 enslaved people. Drawing on newly examined documents—including Tubman’s pension file and plantation records—historian Edda L. Fields‑Black, a descendant of one of the raiders, brings to life the enslaved families and communities who escaped to freedom that night and later helped shape the Gullah Geechee culture. Through this vivid reconstruction, the book reveals one of Tubman’s most extraordinary military achievements and the enduring legacy of those who fought for liberation.
4. The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America by Kathleen B. Casey
The Things She Carried reveals how purses, bags, and sacks have long been critical tools for women asserting privacy, autonomy, and political power in America. Kathleen Casey shows how these objects—from 19th‑century reticules to the handbags carried by immigrant workers, civil rights activists, and Rosa Parks herself—became symbolic extensions of women’s rights struggles, allowing them to navigate male‑dominated spaces, protect personal dignity, and challenge discriminatory systems. Drawing on sources ranging from vintage purses to photographs, advertisements, and legal archives, Casey uncovers how women of all backgrounds used the bags they carried to assert agency, cross restrictive social boundaries, and shape pivotal moments in the fight for gender and racial equality.
5. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA, and the Battle against Thalidomide by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
This biography tells the remarkable story of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the FDA medical officer who, in the early 1960s, prevented the dangerous drug thalidomide from being approved in the United States, sparing countless Americans from catastrophic birth defects. A pioneering scientist who earned advanced degrees in an era with few female researchers, Kelsey resisted intense pressure from Merrell Pharmaceutical and spent nineteen months demanding solid evidence of the drug’s safety. Her unwavering stance not only kept thalidomide off the U.S. market but also spurred sweeping reforms in drug regulation through the 1962 Drug Amendment, which established modern clinical trials, informed consent, and stronger FDA oversight. Drawing on archival records and family papers, the book reveals her lifelong commitment to ethical science, her battles against industry hostility and institutional barriers, and her enduring legacy as a vigilant protector of public health.
What’s really happening with those microbes inside us? Are we really superorganisms or is it all hype? Dr Berenice Langdon reveals the truth about the microbiome.
Does ‘microbiome’ mean our friendly gut bacteria?
Yes, sort of. Many people are aware that the term ‘microbiome’ refers to ‘friendly gut bacteria’. But ‘microbiome’ also refers to all the microbes or germs inside us. These are mainly bacteria – but they also include fungi, viruses, and many others. The word ‘microbiome’ also refers to where these microbes are: the ‘biome’ part of the word. They couldbe in our gut, or on our skin but a microbiome can also refer to much bigger locations outside the body: the microbiome of a forest, even an ocean.
And going back to the human gut; are these microbes friendly? Well, some are and some aren’t. Like all best buddies, sometimes even the ‘friendly’ ones can be awkward sometimes.
Is it true that our microbiome helps protect us from infections?
We know that if we take antibiotics, they can reduce our gut microbiome, and we can get a diarrhoea infection moving into our gut. On the other hand, we know that the microbiome is mainly made up of bacteria, and bacteria often cause infections. So does our microbiome protect us from infections, or does it cause infections?
The answer is a little bit of both. Our gut microbiome is usually made up of benign bacteria, the sort that don’t cause us harm. These benign bacteria keep the ‘baddy bacteria’, the pathogens, out of the gut. They do this either by outcompeting the bad bacteria, or by making the gut a bit too acidic for the bad bacteria to grow. In this way we can see that the gut microbiome is helping us, just a bit, to avoid gastrointestinal infections.
On the other hand, if our ‘friendly’ gut bacteria happen to get out of our guts and into the wrong place—like our blood stream or our brain—even though these bacteria are generally benign and friendly, they can cause a very serious infection.
Is it true that probiotics are live microorganisms that improve our health?
We know that probiotics are live microorganisms. This is part of their definition, and the idea is that taking them is meant to improve our health in some way. It’s the ‘improve our health’ part that’s difficult to prove.
Scientists have been testing probiotics for decades to determine if they have an effect on our health. They’ve tested their effect on all sorts of medical conditions, including constipation, diarrhoea, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome, as well as other non-gut related conditions such as Parkinson’s and autism. So far, however, there’s no evidence to show that probiotics help any of these conditions. The American Gastroenterological Society mainly does not recommend taking probiotics except as part of a research trial.
Many probiotics currently on the market contain bacteria that are found in our food anyway (in yoghurt, for example), or in fact, are already inside us. Some probiotic packaging even says so itself: contains live microorganisms that naturally exist in the body.
If probiotics don’t do much, are they at least safe? The answer for most people is: yes, probably. The bacteria that make up probiotics are usually fairly benign and don’t usually try and attack us.
But for people who are very ill or in intensive care, probiotics are not recommended. Research shows that probiotics can translocate from the gut to the blood stream. Once in the wrong place—just like the microbes in our gut microbiome—probiotics can cause life threatening infections or even death.
Is it true that a microbiome is essential for survival?
Amazingly, the microbiome is not essential for survival for all sorts of animals including rats, mice, guinea pigs, chickens, flies, and even fish. All of these creatures have been successfully raised without a microbiome. Even more amazingly, this isn’t new. Scientists have been doing this for over a hundred years. It’s absolutely possible for certain animals to survive just fine without a microbiome, and even have babies. This is a fascinating field of research, and these animals are sometimes known as gnotobiotic animals or germ-free animals.
However, it is true that herbivores can’t survive without a microbiome. They are dependent on gut microbes to help them ferment grass or foliage and extract the necessary calories. Herbivores really couldn’t survive without a microbiome.
Is it true that fermented foods and drinks are healthy?
We know that not all fermented foods and drinks are healthy and interestingly, not all fermented foods and drinks have microbes in their final product. Alcohol is an obvious example of this; a fermented drink with known health risks and also one in which the final product contains no microbes whatsoever. Other popular fermented products such as soy sauce are full of salt and are also clearly not universally healthy, while the acid contained in the very popular fermented product cider vinegar can dissolve our teeth and is a known cause of oesophagitis.
However, we still love fermented foods. Fermentation often makes foods taste great and helps us preserve our food. So, while there are certain benefits to fermented food and drink in terms of food production and preservation, overall fermentation doesn’t automatically make foods healthy.
Is it true that we need to pay attention to our diets to improve our microbiomes?
We should of course pay attention to our diet, by not eating too much, having a varied diet and including plenty of fibre, as this is the route to good health. But from a microbiome point of view, the bacteria in our guts don’t need much help.
Our colon typically contains a quadrillion bacteria per ml or 1,000,000,000,000 – a mind-blowingly large number. We also have a wide variety of bacteria inside us, constantly changing minute by minute. We obtain these effortlessly from the bacteria that coat the outside of our foods – even those foods we think of as ‘clean’ like bread and fruit as well as the bacteria naturally found within certain fermented foods mentioned above.
A wide variety of bacteria in our gut is regarded by some as a mark of health and is easily achieved by eating a wide variety of foods and by daily contact with each other, with the outside world, and with nature.
Is it true that together with our microbiomes we are superorganisms?
No, this is not true. Together with our microbiomes we are not superorganisms. While microbes do help us a bit—helping us digest a little bit more food, avoiding certain infections—they also cause us a lot of work, as we have to protect ourselves from them and avoid infections. It is not a universally positive relationship.
But ultimately, we are not superorganisms simply because we do not evolve as one unit. Microbes evolve inside us at a vastly faster rate than we do. And we evolve slowly, evolving protective mechanisms against the microbes, but making use of them when we can.
As someone who has spent decades studying the evolution of nuclear energy, I’ve seen its emergence as a promising transformative technology, its stagnation as a consequence of dramatic accidents and its current re-emergence as a potential solution to the challenges of global warming.
While the issues of global warming and sustainable energy strategies are among the most consequential in today’s society, it is difficult to find objective sources that elucidate these topics. Discourse on this subject is often positioned at one or another polemical extreme. Further complicating the flow of objective information is the involvement of advocates of vested interests as seen in the lobbying efforts of the coal, gas and oil industries. My goal has been to present nuclear energy’s potential role in a sustainable energy future—alongside renewables like wind and solar—without ideological baggage.
An additional hurdle that must be overcome in dealing with the pros and cons of nuclear energy is the psychological context in which fear of nuclear weapons and of radiation impedes rational analysis. The deep antipathy to nuclear phenomena is illustrated by what might be called the “Godzilla Complex” that developed after the crew of the Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon 5, was exposed to heavy radiation from a nuclear weapons test in 1954. Godzilla was conceived as a monster that emerged from the depths of the ocean due to radiation exposure. It has become an enduring concept that has been portrayed in nearly forty films in the United States and Japan and in numerous video games, novels, comic books and television shows.
It is not surprising that fear of nuclear reactor radiation has been widespread. In spite of the fact that there are no documented deaths due to nuclear reactor waste (in contrast to deaths from accidents), it is widely assumed that nuclear reactor waste is quite dangerous. In contrast, the fact that premature deaths attributable to the fossil-fuel component of air pollution worldwide exceeds more than 5 million annually generates little concern. Similarly, the total waste produced from nuclear energy can be stored on one acre in a building 50 feet high, whereas for every tonne of coal that is mined, 880 pounds of waste material remain. Furthermore, this waste contains toxic components. Yet public concern for nuclear waste clearly overshadows that for coal, despite these contrasting impacts.
After an in-depth review of the most significant nuclear accidents and recognition of the deep psychological antipathy to nuclear energy, I’ve become increasingly interested in the emergence of an international effort to develop safe, cost-effective nuclear energy known as the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative. This began in 2000 with nine participating countries and has since grown substantially.
In the early years, the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative took a systematic approach to identify reactor designs that could meet demanding criteria—including the key characteristic of being “fail safe”. Rather than depending upon add-on safety apparatus, “fail safe” designs rely on the laws of nature—such as gravity and fluid flow—to provide cooling in the event that the reactor overheats. Another high priority design feature is modular construction, allowing multiple units to be constructed in a timely and economical fashion.
After reviewing dozens of options, the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative settled on six designs that it found to be the most attainable and desirable. Since its initial efforts, countries that have embraced the goals of the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative have been pursuing additional designs including reactors that range in size from quite small to about one third the size of the typical one megawatt reactor.
In my book, I’ve focused my attention on four promising designs. These four designs eschew the vulnerabilities of using water as a coolant that proved so devastating at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The explosion at Chernobyl was due to steam and the three explosions at Fukushima were due to hydrogen gas that resulted from oxidation of fuel rods by overheated water. These were not nuclear explosions. Instead, the four designs I’ve highlighted use liquid sodium, liquid lead, molten salts and helium gas as coolants. Liquid sodium and liquid lead cooled reactors are operating successfully in Russia, while China incorporated a gas cooled reactor into its grid in 2023. In the United States, Kairos Power is constructing a molten salt cooled reactor, while the TerraPower company (founded by Bill Gates) has broken ground on construction of a sodium cooled reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. These are intended to be models for replacing coal fired power plants with Generation IV nuclear plants. Multiple implementations of this approach are planned through the early 2030s.
Given the world-wide interest in Generation IV reactor development and the many initiatives that are being pursued, it is likely that at least some of these projects will come to fruition in the near future. While success is not guaranteed, there is clearly a need for the general public and students to be kept informed of progress leading up to 2030 and beyond.
To help bridge the knowledge gap in this rapidly evolving domain, I’ve launched a newsletter on Substack called “Nuclear Tomorrow.” It’s written for anyone concerned with the intersection of public policy, energy generation, and its impact on global warming. I hope it serves as a resource for those seeking clarity in a complex and consequential field.
With the semester well underway, your college student is probably juggling a lot—classes, homework, exams, and writing assignments—all while managing friendships, jobs, and other responsibilities. This balancing act can be tough for any young adult, but it’s often especially challenging for students with ADHD. In high school, your teen may have benefitted from built-in structure and support systems (e.g., teachers, parents) that helped them stay on track and meet their goals. In college, those supports tend to fade, leaving students to navigate much more on their own.
As a parent, you can play an important role in helping your student adjust to these new demands. Sometimes this means offering a little extra “scaffolding”—gentle support and guidance—to help them build the skills they need to thrive on their own. That’s exactly why I wrote Mastering the Transition to College: The Ultimate Guidebook for Parents of Teens with ADHD. It’s packed with practical information and strategies to help you and your teen navigate these years successfully. This blog post offers a first look at some of those tips, so you’ll have tools ready if your student starts to struggle, academically or otherwise, this semester.
Communication and collaboration are key. You probably know from the high school years that giving unsolicited advice to your teen can backfire. Pushing too hard often leads to resistance. Instead, try to use a calm, collaborative tone. Let your teen know you’re there to support and guide them, but that they are in control of their own decisions. Approaching conversations this way helps your teen feel respected and more open to brainstorming solutions with you.
Set goals. Before you can help your teen make changes, it’s important to first understand what they want. Ask about their goals, not just in academics, but in all areas of their life that matter to them. Once you know their priorities, you can work together to map out what steps are needed to get there. This also makes it easier to guide them without feeling like you’re imposing. Some of these steps may be addressed in the tips below.
Help your teen establish an organizational system. This may sound obvious, but it’s incredibly powerful: having a clear system to track tasks and deadlines is a game changer. Encourage your teen to choose a system that works for them. It could be a paper planner, a phone app, or a calendar on their laptop. The key is sustainability, so expect some trial and error as they experiment. Whatever they choose, the idea is that the system should be sustainable. The goal is to help them feel in control of their time, not overwhelmed by it.
Encourage your teen to develop a system for completing tasks. College life means that the to-do list is rarely empty. Your teen may feel as if their tasks are never-ending… as one is completed, another is added to the list. Therefore, developing a method for triaging what needs to get completed and by when will be crucial. An approach that balances what is important vs. what is urgent is often a good place to start.
Discuss all available campus resources with your teen. College campuses offer a lot of support to help your teen succeed. However, students (and parents) often find it difficult to know what resources are available and how to access them. Resources may be academic in nature (e.g., tutoring, office hours, advising, academic accommodations, writing center), mental health related (e.g., student health center, counseling center, skills groups), or logistical (e.g., career services, resident assistants). Knowing what resources to use, when, and how to access them will be essential for ensuring a successful college career. Further, if your teen needs more support than your conversations with them or my book can provide, finding a licensed professional may be a helpful next step. Outside help can be an important part of your teen achieving success.
I hope these tips provide you with a solid starting point in supporting your teen with the transition to and through college. For even more guidance and detailed advice as to how to implement these strategies, check out my book Mastering the Transition to College: The Ultimate Guidebook for Parents of Teens with ADHD.
In a 2011 speech about shared decision making in healthcare, the UK Secretary of State, Andrew Lansley, coined the phrase “nothing about me, without me”. Used at the time to summarise efforts to empower patients in decisions about their care, the phrase has since been borrowed by advocates and activists on a range of social justice topics.
This year’s Open Access Week poses the question: “How, in a time of disruption, can communities reassert control over the knowledge they produce?” Here at OUP, we were inspired to delve into our open access publishing for examples of research that doesn’t just study communities, but actively involves them. From shaping research questions to guiding implementation, these projects center the voices and experiences of the people at their heart. This commitment to community-led knowledge creation isn’t limited to the articles themselves. It’s reflected in the editorial policies, peer review practices, and team structures that support our journals—ensuring that open access is not just about availability, but about equity and inclusion in research and publishing processes:
Many of our journals, Nucleic Acids Research included, utilise Early Career Boards to ensure their publications are managed in a way that serves the next generation of researchers and provides those earlier in their careers with experience contributing to journal development.
JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute and JNCI Cancer Spectrum are committed to supporting and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in editorial practices and published content. Recognizing that many populations have been systematically excluded from scholarly publishing, the journals have several initiatives strengthening diversity.
From participatory research approaches to elder care, to self-determination paths for trans and gender diverse people, to rural ownership of businesses in areas of high tourism, and citizen empowerment during energy transitions – our open access publishing is full of examples of the benefits of including people in the process of generating knowledge about them. All articles included here are published with an open access license, ensuring peer-reviewed, trusted knowledge and diverse voices can reach everyone, anywhere in the world:
