Newspaper photograph of Alice Diamond
Emily Burgess, who studied for PhD in history at the University of Portsmouth, has had a paper published in Women’s History Review which is free to read here. The paper looks at press depiction of Alice Diamond, leader of the interwar Forty Thieves gang. By mythmaking, framing Diamond as an ‘Underworld Amazon’, ‘Giant’, and ‘Queen of the Terrors’, the press was able to project female gangsterism as a form of ‘internal terror’ to fuel fears over gender, post-war brutalisation and the changing interwar landscape.See a previous post about Emily’s work on London’s female gangsters here.
Emily is a graduate of the University, having studied for a BA (Hons) History degree between 2017 and 2020 (awarded First Class honours) and an MRes in History between 2020 and 2021 (Distinction). She received her PhD in History from the University of Portsmouth in 2025. Her thesis, entitled ‘The “Underworld” Paradox: The Dissemination of Female Gangsterism into the Popular Consciousness, 1890–1940’ explored the complexities of organised crime, space, genderand criminogenic ‘otherness’. She worked as a Research Assistant for the University of Portsmouth’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Science and the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries. Emily was also the recipient of the Robbie Gray Memorial Prize (2020).
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