Professor Gwen Seabourne
B.A.(Cantab.), B.C.L.(Oxon.), Ph.D.(Bristol)
Expertise
Legal History: pre-1500 England and Wales, women.
Current positions
Professor of Legal History
University of Bristol Law School
Contact
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Biography
Gwen Seabourne has degrees in Law and History. She is Professor of Legal History in the University of Bristol Law School. She teaches Legal History and Property Law, and supervises Ph.D. students in property law and medieval history. Her main research interest is Legal History, particularly pre-1500 English and Welsh Legal History. Her PhD was on aspects of government, law and morality in medieval England, and she has written on subjects from bread price regulation to suicide. Recent work has focused on gender in the medieval world. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a member of the councils of the Selden Society and Cymdeithas Hanes Cyfraith Cymru/Welsh Legal History Society.
Research interests
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Women in the medieval common law
Principal Investigator
Description
This project examines the participation of women in the medieval common law, and the attitudes towards women in the classical sources of medieval common law: law reports, treatises and plea…Managing organisational unit
University of Bristol Law SchoolDates
01/09/2017 to 01/09/2020
A study of non-judicial incarceration medieval England
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
University of Bristol Law SchoolDates
01/04/2010 to 01/08/2010
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Selected publications
27/03/2021Women in the Medieval Common Law
Women in the Medieval Common Law
Judging a Hereford hanging
Midland History
‘It is necessary that the issue be heard to cry or squall within the four [walls]’
Journal of Legal History
Recent publications
31/03/2026Libidinous masters and ‘lustie rogues’? Concern with consent and the English offence of mayhem
Mayhem: The Gendering (or Not) of Legal Responses to Bodily Harm
Medieval law today: modern mayhem?
‘Another Sort of Treason’
Law and Constitutional Change
"In the beginning": dealing with unknowns at the start of life
Uncertainty in Comparative Law and Legal History
Teaching
She teaches undergraduate units in Legal History and Land Law. In the past, she has taught other Property units at UG and PG level, as well as Medical Law.