Dr James Bowen B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Personal Statement

I completed a BA in History at Lancaster University including an Erasmus exchange at the University of Copenhagen, before pursuing an MA in English Local History at the University of Leicester. Returning to Lancaster, my doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Angus J.L. Winchester, examined the governance and management of common land in Shropshire from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It engaged with several intersecting historiographical themes: first, the importance of common land and resources for local agrarian communities; second, in terms of governance, the function of manor courts not only as the institution responsible for the management of common land but more widely as a form of local administration; and lastly, with regard to debates concerning poor relief and the treatment of poverty and welfare, the use of common land and resources by cottagers and the poor.

I was the holder of the Economic History Society R.H. Tawney Junior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, for the academic year 2012-13.