Dawson Award

Announcing the Sandra Trudgen Dawson Award for Service, Scholarship, and Teaching

The CCWH is proud to announce the launch of an initiative to honor the life of Sandra Trudgen Dawson, the long-time executive director, member, and advocate of the CCWH, with the establishment of the Sandra Trudgen Dawson Award for Service, Scholarship, and Teaching. The award will be open to CCWH members whose career has not followed the traditional tenure-track path. In the spirit of Sandra’s pragmatism and her dedication to concrete aid to anyone who asked, we do not envision restricting the use of this award: it can be used for travel costs, necessary materials, research expenses, or care labor. We plan to offer one award up to $500 a year until we raise $10,000 for the award. After we reach that benchmark, we will seek to offer more awards each year.

Sanda Trudgen Dawson was a beloved member of the CCWH community. A native of the UK, Sandra worked for many years as a nurse and midwife before entering graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her PhD in 2007. She was a dynamic scholar who was committed to the field of women and gender history. Sandra, like many in the CCWH, followed a “non-traditional” path in academia. In spite of never securing a tenured position, she remained incredibly productive, writing seven books, including the just-published Mothers, Midwives and Reproductive Labor in Interwar and Wartime Britain (2024), as well as countless articles and book reviews.

Known as a prodigiously generous scholar and friend, Sandra embodied the CCWH’s spirit of collaboration, support, and friendship. She was a one-woman node that connected a number of women’s history organizations. She served as the Executive Director of the CCWH from 2010 to 2020. Before that, she had served as a graduate representative, and then secretary, for the Western Association of Women’s History and from 2016 onward she worked as the Executive Administrator for the Berkshire’s Conference of Women’s History. Indeed, Sandra personally connected a huge network of women’s and gender scholars from around the world. Her loss is deeply felt.

Please join our efforts to honor Sandra’s memory by donating funds to create this new award. Click to donate using our secure online form or to donate by check.