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
01/01/2024‘Another Sort of Treason’: the troubled home of husband-killing in late-medieval common law
Law and Constitutional Change
"In the beginning": dealing with unknowns at the start of life
Uncertainty in Comparative Law and Legal History
Le toucher et la pression
Cet article envisage à la fois la présence et l’absence de références à des comportements relevant du harcèlement sexuel et non du viol dans les documents conservés dans les archives de la common law datant de la fin du Moyen Âge. Il suggère que, si l’étude de ce type d’infraction dans ces sources judiciaires n’est pas facile, des leçons importantes restent à tirer des références éparses qui peuvent y être trouvées, et ce du fait même qu’elles sont peu nombreuses et éparpillées. L’article analyse la façon dont ces actions ont été marginalisées, effacées, fragmentées, que ce soit dans le contexte judiciaire ou dans l’histoire du droit. Enfin, il plaide en faveur d’un regain d’efforts pour explorer les sources disponibles, en gardant l’esprit suffisamment ouvert pour chercher ce type d’infraction dans des plaintes apparemment sans lien avec les délits sexuels
Rape and Law in Medieval Western Europe
A companion to Crime and Deviance in the Middle Ages
Bracton, Brown and 'bollock hafted daggers': reflections on the masculinities of mayhem
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.