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Laura Gowing joined the department in 2002, following teaching posts at Essex, Hertfordshire and Royal Holloway, where she studied for her PhD.

• Women and gender  in  England 1500-1700
• Early modern social history
• History of Crime
• History of London
• History of the body

Laura Gowing’s research uses legal records to examine the lives of women in early modern England. Her work is concerned primarily with the history of sex, gender, language and the body, and more broadly with early modern social and cultural history. Her book Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-century England (Yale, 2003) was awarded the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize by the American Historical Association. This area is developed in the MA option Body and Society in Early Modern Europe. Her most recent book, Gender Relations in early  modern England (Pearson Longman 2012) presents recent developments in the field together with new documents. Recent work on women’s work and the history of gesture appears in Cultural and Social History 2013.

Laura Gowing, ‘‘The manner of submission: gender and demeanour in 17th century London’, Cultural and Social History 10:1 (2013)

Laura Gowing, Gender Relations in Early Modern England (Pearson Longman, 2012)

Laura Gowing, ‘‘Women’s bodies and the making of sex in seventeenth-century England’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society  37: 4 (2012),  pp. 813-822. ISSN 0097-9740.

Laura Gowing (2005) 'The politics of women's friendship in early modern England', in Gowing, Hunter and Rubin (eds), 2005, Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe 1300-1800 pp. 131-149 [Chapter]

Laura Gowing (2003) Common bodies : women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England. New Haven, Conn. ; London: Yale University Press [Authored Book in print]

Laura Gowing (2002)  'The Haunting of Susan Lay: Servants and Mistresses in Seventeenth-Century England' GENDER AND HISTORY, 14 (2), pp. 183-201. [Article in print Journal]

Laura Gowing (2000) ''The freedom of the streets' : women and social space, 1560-1640 /', in Londinopolis : a social and cultural history of early modern London, 1500-1750 [Chapter]

Patricia Crawford, Laura Gowing (2000) Women's worlds in seventeenth-century England London ; New York: Routledge [Authored Book in print]

Undergraduate

• 4AAH1003 Early Modern Britain 1500-1750
• 6AAH3009/10 Women and Gender in Early Modern England
• 5AAH1027 Crime and the Law in early modern England

Postgraduate

• 7AAH2006 Body and Society in Early Modern Europe
• 7AAH0002 Advanced Skills in early modern History
• 7AAH2002 Approaches to early modern History

Enquiries from prospective PhD students in any area of British social and cultural history 1500-1800 are welcome. Dr Gowing is particularly interested in:

•     The history of women and gender
•     sex and sexuality
•     crime and the law
•     London
•     popular culture

Dr Laura Gowing is a convenor of two seminars at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) – Society, Culture and Belief in Early Modern Europe and Women’s History – and is an editor of History Workshop Journal.