Professor Maleiha Malik, Professor of Law at King’s College London, gives a lunch time talk at the National Portrait Gallery to mark International Women’s Day.

This summer marks 100 years since suffragette Emily Davidson threw herself under a horse at the Derby. Using portraits in the Gallery’s Collection to tell the story of British suffragettes, Professor Malik will discuss how British suffragettes deployed direct political action in the cause of women’s rights. As a result, they were often imprisoned and went on hunger strike. Some women, such as Kitty Marion, were force fed over 200 times. Through these acts of political resistance, the suffragettes impressed Gandhi and helped transform British parliamentary democracy. Maleiha Malik will also discuss how the Gallery itself became the site of direct suffragette political action with the destruction of the Thomas Carlyle portrait in 1914.

For more information please visit the National Portrait Gallery website.