Forgotten Scholars: Rediscovering Women in Medieval and Early-Modern Academia for Gender-Inclusive Place Naming in Universities

Abstract

In our universities, many places have names after great scholars of all times. For example, in our region,we find: Place Montesquieu, Auditorium Erasmus, Justus Lipsius Straat, etc. A small minority of places are named after women. This is true in any country.

Now, more and more universities adopt the following political statement: increasing the visibility of women in the public domain is one of the possible levers to promote equality between women and men.

To help administrators of European Universities in this task, we provide here a list ofwomen who were either professors at a university or member of an science academy before the year 1800. These women from the past started to blaze the trail, and it is to them that we must look for inspiration.

This list is an updated version of the appendix to our paper David de la Croix, Mara Vitale, Women in European academia before 1800 — religion, marriage, and human capital, European Review of Economic History, 2023;, heac023, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heac023