The Alice Bacon Lecture Series

Dame Sharon White delivers the 2023 Alice Bacon Lecture

The Alice Bacon Lecture is an annual public event and celebrates the achievements of pioneering women, and is hosted by the University of Leeds’ Centre for Democratic Politics. It is named after the Leeds Labour MP who led a crusade to improve the education of working-class girls and boys.

Alice Bacon was elected to represent Leeds North East in 1945 and served her city constituents continuously until her retirement a quarter of a century later, when she took up a seat in the House of Lords as a Baroness. Leeds did not return another woman to the Commons until the election in 2010 of Leeds West and Pudsey MP, and now Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves. Reeves is also the biographer of Baroness Bacon. Ms Reeves partnered with the University’s School of Politics and International Studies to establish the lectures in the name of her trailblazing forebear, with the aim of celebrating the achievements of successful women – locally and nationally.

The inaugural lecture was given in 2018 by Harriet Harman, the House of Commons’ longest continuously serving female MP, and has been followed by several high-profile speakers in the years since, covering issues including women in power, female leadership and gendered inequalities in healthcare.

Past Alice Bacon Lecture series speakers:

• 2018 Harriet Harman MP
• 2019 Baroness Hale of Richmond
• 2021 Baroness Doreen Lawrence
• 2022 Professor Mary Beard
• 2023 Dame Sharon White
• 2025 Naga Munchetty

The Alice Bacon Lecture series will return in early 2026.