{"id":571,"date":"2020-11-30T16:23:56","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T16:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/?p=571"},"modified":"2024-09-11T15:50:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T14:50:32","slug":"alumna-author-and-activist-stephanie-davies-shares-her-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/2020\/11\/30\/alumna-author-and-activist-stephanie-davies-shares-her-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumna, author and activist Stephanie Davies shares her story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo credit: Nyra Lang<\/em><\/p>\n

Stephanie Davies<\/a> (BA Modern Languages & European Studies \u2013 French 1983) is the author of Other Girls Like Me <\/em>(2020, Bedazzled Ink), a memoir of her time spent at Greenham Common Women\u2019s Peace Camp, which has been shortlisted for the People\u2019s Book Prize. She tells us about student activism, working with M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res and the importance of following your passion\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the first things I did when I arrived on campus was to join a sit-in in the administrative buildings to call for disinvestment in South Africa. I remember lying on the floor, sharing a pillow with another student I had only just met, surrounded by filing cabinets and office furniture. Finding the Anti-Apartheid Group at the University meant that I got to meet students from around the world. I always say that activism creates a sense of community, and this was my first experience of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went on to become the Chair of the Anti-Apartheid Group, and one thing we did was try to get all the money made by the Students' Union's Space Invaders machines sent to support the African National Congress School in Tanzania. We weren't successful!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNot long after leaving Bath, I went to live at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp in Berkshire to protest nuclear war. So few people have heard of the Greenham Common women, yet we were a mass movement that swept the UK in the 1980s, involving tens of thousands of women.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: Ming de Nasty<\/em><\/p>\n

Sharing my story<\/h3>\n

\u201cI decided to write Other Girls Like Me<\/em> as I wanted to shine a light on that era and describe the personal and political liberation that living in this women-only environment gave me. I'm especially excited by the upsurge in activism among young people today and hope they see some of their history in this book.<\/p>\n

\u201cI'd only written for others before, so it was fun to write for myself, to tell my own story. I had to learn to write scenes \u2013 like close-ups in a film, my memoir teacher told me. I started off being too \u2018big picture\u2019 and had to learn when to come in for close-ups and write dialogue and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Greenham, I moved to Brighton where I became part of the \u2018Stop the Clause 28\u2019 movement - this was a law prohibiting the \"promotion of homosexuality\" as a \"pretended family unit\" in schools and libraries across the country. Here I co-founded A Queer Tribe<\/em> magazine, worked in bookshops, and taught English as a Foreign Language before moving to New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI joined Doctors Without Borders\/M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF), where I was Director of Public Education for many years. I left MSF to go freelance, and my main client right now is a non-profit called the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, created by MSF with funding from its Nobel Peace Prize award. I helped to organise a gala two years ago featuring Dr Anthony Fauci, Sharon Stone and the NBA Hall of Fame player Dikembe Mutombo.<\/p>\n

Love of languages \"\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u201cI chose to study Modern Languages because I loved France. When I was a teenager, my school did an exchange trip to the Dordogne and I fell in love with the country immediately. I loved the sound of the language. I loved the countryside, the warmth, the food, the coffee, and \u2013 on later trips! \u2013 the wine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bath, I loved walking by the river, by Pulteney Bridge. I lived in a basement flat in the Circus, and l loved that area and the Royal Crescent. I liked dancing and concerts. We saw Tears for Fears once \u2013 this was back when they were called Graduate \u2013 in a tiny club.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as for Bath graduates: follow your heart, take care of yourself and be kind to yourself as well as others. Don't worry too much about creating a perfect career path, unless that is where your heart is taking you \u2013 it will unfold, often in unexpected ways. You\u2019re still young and may need to also experience a bit of wildness or activism, if your life allows that. At least that was my experience!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo credit: Nyra Lang Stephanie Davies (BA Modern Languages & European Studies \u2013 French 1983) is the author of Other Girls Like Me (2020, Bedazzled Ink), a memoir of her time spent at Greenham Common Women\u2019s Peace Camp, which has...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1377,"featured_media":572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[186,180],"tags":[5,12,91,15,93],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-news-and-updates","category-features","tag-alumni","tag-careers","tag-case-studies","tag-international-2","tag-modern-languages"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2020\/11\/2020_STEPHANIE-DAVIES_1095-FINAL.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}