Valerie Anne Smith

Name(s) : Valerie Anne Smith (nee Hopkins)

Family

Mother: Doris Evelyn Hopkins (nee Newlyn)

Father: David Derrett Hopkins

Marriage and Family Life

Married Geoffrey John Smith (widower) 1976, no issue

Education

Graduated in History, University of Southampton, England 1973. Graduated in History for the 2nd time (2006), but now with First Class Honours, University of Kent at Canterbury. Masters in History, with Distinction (2009). Doctorate in History (2017)

Religion

Christian, Church of England, later Baptist

Transformation(s)

After a long career of teaching history in secondary school, she later took advantage of opportunities for mature students to study at her local university, the University of Kent at Canterbury. Two examples led her on, a senior female academic teaching on her Masters, and another fellow student some years previously who had gained his history doctorate in the same faculty, long after retirement age. They were models for what she could also achieve. 

Contemporaneous Network(s)

Although not contemporaneous, her research into important female figures in Dissent (writing, thinking, promoting, publishing) showed her that what they had quietly done 200 years before, she was also doing – writing, thinking, promoting, publishing. They would live again and come forward through her championship, her research and her publication, alongside their male peers who might already have received their due limelight.  

Works/Agency

Basically, Dr Smith will be remembered for her solid contribution to the field, her book ‘Rational Dissenters in Late Eighteenth-Century England’ (2020), based on her doctoral research. 

Legacy and Influence

Dr Smith always declared her modest ambition of making a small contribution to the vast mosaic of historical research and knowledge. Each tiny piece benefits the scholars of the present and the future. Sadly she did not live to develop a further career in patient and painstaking historical research to which she was so suited.