British medieval historian Eileen Power (1889-1940) was one of Britain's most eminent female historians of the first half of the twentieth century. Becoming professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics in 1931, Power gained academic recognition to a degree that was difficult for women to obtain in this period. Numerous writings on Power discuss 1920-1921, when she travelled around the world as an Albert-Kahn fellow, as a formative year in her career indicating the importance of travel for achieving scholarly success. In contrast, no attention has been paid to the significance of Power's first academic journey in 1910-1911, when she spent a year in Paris. This stay abroad would however be equally decisive since it was then that she decided to pursue a career in history and become a professional scholar in the medieval discipline. However, at this time, women were not self-evident scholars but rather considered amateurs, even if they had an academic degree. Therefore, the main question in this article is whether and how Power started to build up her scholarly persona while in Paris, trying to overcome her amateur status, to be seen and recognized as a credible, trustworthy scholar. To do so, I analyse two types of personal writing namely Power's diary and letters to her close friend Margery Garrett. Employing the concept of 'autobiographical performativity', I consider these writings as performative acts that help us gain valuable insight into Eileen Power's persona formation during the early stages of her career.

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Diaries present a valuable source for historical research. They provide an insight into the lives of ordinary people, informing us about the everyday as well as the extraordinary in the context of changing times and societies. Diaries give us a personal perspective on public issues, an understanding of how people thought at a certain time and place, information almost unobtainable from other sources. However, diary writing is a genre at risk. Not only do diarists often disregard the value of their writings and make no plans or efforts for their future conservation, but the private nature of diaries often makes people hesitant about saving them for future generations. In addition, the advancement of the digital age is radically changing the genre. Traditionally associated with pen and paper, diaries are increasingly ‘written’ online or otherwise compiled through the use of digital methods. The internet is quite literally changing our lives as well as the practices of life-writing. This article was submitted to the European Journal of Life Writing on 8 August 2017 and published on 5 October 2017.

In this article, we evaluate the integration of gender as a category of historical analysis within the curriculum of history programmes at seven Dutch universities. We do so as ‘integration’ was the term used by most of our informants to characterise the inclusion of gender in the curriculum. We understand integration to mean attention for gender in all courses or wherever appropriate, which ‐ we suggest ‐ does not exclude courses that specifically focus on gender history. Throughout the article, gender history is used in a broad sense as including ‘women’s history’. We have interviewed lecturers and students at the different universities and analysed their programme brochures for the year 2015-2016. Furthermore, we have studied how, in history theses for the year 2015, gender as a category of analysis is used. Many of the lecturers we spoke with stated firmly that ‘integration’ is aimed for at their university. But, how exactly is this idea of ‘integration’ understood and effected in practice? Is it a case of wishful thinking, a magic solution, or is it rather a disappearing act? We conclude that, while integration is a noble ambition, in order for this to be truly successful it is necessary to make such policies more explicit.