Laura Gowing

Professor Laura Gowing is a leading scholar in early modern history at King’s College London, affiliated with the Faculty of Arts & Humanities and the Department of History. She is a member of the Queer@King's network and co-convenor of the Society, Culture and Belief and Women’s History seminars at the Institute of Historical Research.

Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, and social history in early modern England (1500-1700), particularly through legal records and material culture. Key areas include women’s work, the history of the body, crime, and London’s social dynamics. Her recent work explores gender in seventeenth-century London, earning the 2023 Social History Society Book Prize for Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London.

Professor Gowing has published extensively on topics such as female apprenticeship, domestic spaces, and queer histories. Her awards include the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize (2003) for Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England. She supervises research on British social and cultural history (1500-1800) and engages in public outreach through lectures and workshops.