Early Women Writers and the Sciences

This page collects visualizations and datasets from the “New Digital Methods for Understanding the Impacts of Early Women Writers on the Development of Science and Philosophy” initiative.

This project is a London-Boston, collaborative project between Northeastern University London, the PolyGraphs project, the NULab, and the Women Writers Project (the project PIs are Sarah Connell, Julia Flanders, Brian Ball, and Peter West). The project examines and highlights the impacts of early women scientists and natural philosophers on the development of these disciplines during a formative period of the Enlightenment. The project takes Margaret Cavendish’s (1623–1673) engagements with the Royal Society as a case study in the relation between early women’s writing and early institutional science.

Network Analysis and Simulations

Resources for examining the intellectual networks of early women scientists and natural philosophers through simulations of knowledge transfer:

• This exhibit on network analysis and computer network simulations evaluates the status of women in early modern intellectual networks, working with data from the Six Degrees of Francis Bacon project.
• Published on Women Writers in Context, “Computer Network Simulations and Early Modern Intellectual Networks: The Case of Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society” discusses the findings of computer network simulations research examining the intellectual network around the seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish, with particular emphasis on her connections to the founding members of the Royal Society.
• This exhibit shares animated simulations of knowledge transfer in several networks related to the Royal Society and Margaret Cavendish.

Symposium

On October 27, 2025, the project hosted a symposium in partnership with The Philosopher. This event featured Athene Donald, Francesca Peacock, and Jennifer Park in conversation with Peter West. These experts in women’s writing in philosophy and science—both past and present—discussed how and why women were marginalised and excluded from these disciplines, challenges and obstacles faced by those taking on the task of recovering women’s work, and the vital importance of developing historical narratives centering on women. View the event recording or read about the event on the WWP blog.

Text Corpora

This project has worked to expand resources for analyzing early women’s scientific writing by transcribing and encoding several texts by key writers. As of summer 2026, the project team has added four works by Margaret Cavendish, producing a corpus of her writing with 31 texts and more than 1.2 million words. Texts by Mary Somerville, Henrietta Beaufort, Sarah Trimmer, and Jane Squire are now in progress and will be added to Women Writers Online when complete. To situate these works in their historical and social contexts, the team has assembled comparison corpora with men’s philosophical and scientific texts, including a corpus of works by members of the Royal Society. Details on these corpora are available at this summary sheet and the texts can be shared upon request: contact wwp@northeastern.edu .

News and Blog Coverage

Read more about this project on the WWP’s blog and in the news:

• “Analyzing Scientific Discourse in the Works of Margaret Cavendish and Her Contemporaries” by Mel Williams
• “The WWP Begins Research on the Impacts of Early Women Writers on Science and Philosophy” by Colleen Nugent McLean
• “Symposium on the Marginalization of Women in the Sciences” by Catherine Trusky
• “Scientific discovery was slower when women were ignored, research shows” by Patrick Daly

Research Assistants

This project would not have been possible without our exceptional team of research assistants: Colleen Nugent, Mel Williams, Tyler Gore, Marta Weber, Rafael Morris, Nicolas Kuri, Catherine Trusky, Amina Alhassan, and Mia Jeffries.