{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2016}} {{Use British English|date=October 2016}} '''Laura Gowing''' {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|FBA}} is professor of women’s history and early modern history at King's College London<ref name=Kings>[http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/people/staff/Academic/gowingl/index.aspx Professor Laura Gowing.] King's College, London. Retrieved 17 May 2015.</ref>. She received her PhD from Royal Holloway, London, supervised by Lyndal Roper, where she was subsequently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She lectured at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Essex before King’s, and is a member of the editorial board of ''History Workshop Journal''. Gowing was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Professor Laura Gowing FBA |url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/fellows/laura-gowing-fba/ |access-date=2023-10-21 |website=The British Academy |language=en}}</ref>
==Research== Gowing's research relates to early modern England, women, gender, the body, sexuality, crime, and London. Much of her work uses legal records as a source for the history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women, with a particular focus on language and the body. Her first book ''Domestic Dangers'' revealed high numbers of London women litigating and testifying about sex and marriage, arguing for a 'language of insult' that defined women through sexual reputation, and demonstrating women’s authoritative use of the law. In ''Common Bodies'' (2003), Gowing recaptured the bodily experiences of ordinary women, critiquing the approaches of Thomas W. Laqueur and Michel Foucault to the history of the body in the early modern period<ref>[http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/david-wootton/never-knowingly-naked "Never Knowingly Naked"] David Wootton, ''London Review of Books'', 15 April 2004. Retrieved 17 May 2015.</ref> in a book that was positively reviewed in ''The Guardian''.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview23 Pointing the finger.] Kathryn Hughes, ''The Guardian'', 4 October 2003. Retrieved 17 May 2015.</ref>
==Selected publications== *''Ingenious Trade'', Cambridge University Press, 2021. *"The manner of submission: gender and demeanour in 17th century London", ''Cultural and Social History'' 10:1 (2013). *''Gender Relations in Early Modern England'', (Pearson Longman, 2012, 2nd edition 2022) *"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. *"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]. *''Common bodies : women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England''. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2003. *''Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
== References == {{Reflist}}
== External links == *[https://kcl.academia.edu/LauraGowing Laura Gowing at academia.edu] *[http://www.historyextra.com/feature/my-favourite-historical-places-professor-laura-gowing My favourite historical places: Professor Laura Gowing.]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gowing, Laura}} Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Academics of King's College London Category:Alumni of Royal Holloway, University of London Category:20th-century British historians Category:21st-century British historians Category:Historians of the early modern period Category:British women historians {{UK-historian-stub}} Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Women's historians Category:British gender studies academics Category:Historians of sexuality Category:British legal historians Category:Historians of London