Co-organized by Historic Royal Palaces, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, in association with the exhibition Enlightened Princesses : Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, on view at Kensington Palace, 22 June–12 November 2017

Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), Augusta of Saxe Gotha (1719–1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818), three Protestant German princesses, became variously Princess of Wales, Queen Consort, and Princess Dowager of Great Britain. Recent research has explored how in fulfilling these roles they made major contributions to the arts ; the development of new models of philanthropy and social welfare ; the promotion and support of advances in science and medicine, as well as trade and industry ; and the furthering of imperial ambition. While local contexts may have conditioned the forms such initiatives took, their objectives were rooted in a European tradition of elite female empowerment

This symposium, Enlightened Princesses : Britain and Europe, 1700–1820, seeks to investigate the role played by royal women—electresses, princesses, queens consort, reigning queens, and empresses—in the shaping of court culture and politics in Europe of the long eighteenth century.

Papers that explore some of the following themes are invited :

• Royal women as political agents
• Royal women : networks and conversations
• Royal women : education, charity, and health
• Royal women as patrons of art and architecture
• Royal women and science
• Royal women : mercantile culture and the wider world
• Royal women as political gardeners

Please send proposals of 400 words maximum, for papers of 25 minutes, together with a short biography of 100 words maximum to samantha.howard chez hrp.org.uk. The submission deadline is 15 May 2017.

Further information about the exhibition Enlightened Princesses : Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World can be found online here