Professor Megan Bowman

Professor Megan Bowman is a full Professor of Law and founding Director of the King’s Centre for Climate Law & Governance. She also leads the King's/United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) partnership on Legal Readiness for Climate Finance and consults to governments and the private sector on implementing the Paris Agreement and transitioning to net zero.

Professor Bowman’s expertise focuses on empirical and transnational analyses of financial regulation and company law in the context of climate change and planetary sustainability. Her award-winning research has been cited in scientific reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2022), the UN High-Level Climate Champions' Pivot Point regulatory report (2022) and featured in the eco-arts digital display The Quiet Enchanting on The Strand in London (2023). Her first book Banking on Climate Change: How Finance Actors and Transnational Regulatory Regimes are Responding (Kluwer 2015) has been lauded as ground-breaking and was launched by then Hon. Mr. Justice William Blair of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. She has been Principal Investigator on several high impact research grants including a prestigious Leverhulme Fellowship on climate-related financial and corporate regulation in Europe and the UK (2020-2022); and her current work explores justice imperatives in the context of systems change and corporate accountability as illustrated by a King’s Sustainability Seed Grant on youth-led climate litigation (2023-2024).

Professor Bowman is also a Visiting Professor in EU Company Law at Université de Paris-Dauphine; guest lecturer in climate law and sustainable finance topics at the University of Cambridge; and Legal Research Fellow for the legal charity Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). She has held previous academic positions at McGill University, UNSW Australia, Monash University, and Victoria Law School where she was awarded the highest accolade of the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award (2008). Most recently Professor Bowman was awarded the 2023 Supervisory Excellence Award for PhD supervision in The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London.

Professor Bowman is a qualified barrister and solicitor of the High Court of Australia and Supreme Court of Victoria who began her career as a top-tier legal practitioner in corporate/commercial law and environmental/planning law. She holds a double bachelor’s degree in Arts/Law (Hons, Monash), an LLM in Comparative Law (McGill) and a PhD in regulatory theory (The Australian National University).

Research interests

Professor Bowman’s research concerns the intersections between financial regulation and markets, company law and commercial behaviours, and planetary sustainability. She is motivated by regulatory design theories that account for the levers and limits of law in facilitating sustainability in market economies and emerging economies.

Areas of interest and expertise:

• Sustainable finance and investment, including climate-related financial regulation
• Climate law and implementing the Paris Agreement
• Corporate law especially directors’ duties
• Corporate accountability, including climate litigation
• Justice dimensions and systems change for mainstreaming green finance
• Technology for sustainable finance

Teaching

Teaching

LLB

• Green Finance
• Commercial Law
• Contract Law

Master-level degrees and Executive Education

• ESG and Sustainable Finance (Exec Ed)
• Green Finance (LLM International Business Law & Transnational Law pathways; MSc King’s Business School)
• Global Law of Climate Change (LLM Dispute Resolution & Transnational Law pathways)
• EU Company Law (Université de Paris - Dauphine)

PURE profile

For more information on Prof Bowman's research, visit our research portal.