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Since its advent in the 1970s, Women’s and Gender History has produced frequent and multiple historiographical reviews and methodological reflections. These surveys depict a combination of assertive celebrations, theoretical hesitations, methodological alliances, and epistemological frictions that are a testimony to the dynamic and healthy state of the discipline. The field of History of Women’s Education has also regularly produced its own literature reviews, which have provided a zoomed-in and distinct portrait of the myriad ways in which informal education, self-education and institutionalised schooling have simultaneously permitted and conditioned both agentic and normative gendered identities, networks, practices, and processes of becoming across time and place. Seeking to add to these literature reviews, this article stands for an introductory qualitative historiographical survey that, focusing on some of the theoretical turns that have characterised the Humanities and Social Sciences, puts into play Hecumen – a field-specific database designed within the framework of our state-funded project «Connecting History of Education: International networks, publications and global dissemination». The paper argues that, in line with Women’s and Gender History historiographical reviews, both Hecumen-retrieved articles and contributors to this special issue reflect the multiple, complex, conflicting, and intersecting strands that characterise the field of History of Women’s Education. This study builds on the desire to encourage fellow academics to put into play Hecumen’s search aid to explore further sophisticated understandings on past and current trends in History of (Women’s) Education and hence venture into sharp-edged new scholarship in dialogue with theoretical turns.
