Dr James Owen

History of Parliament Research

For the House of Commons, 1832-1868, project, I research and write articles focusing on the north-east and north-west of England.

Research and Publications

I joined the History of Parliament in 2009 after two years of teaching British history to study-abroad American students, and a year spent teaching and researching in the United States. I completed my PhD at Cambridge in 2006. My main research interests include:

- The exportation of the culture of Westminster politics to the British Empire in the Victorian era; MPs who became colonial governors
- The impact of the North-American political system on nineteenth-century England; Victorian MPs and British labour activists who toured North America
- Party organisation, working-class radicalism and the ‘pre-history’ of the Labour party in Victorian England

My publications include:

- Labour and the caucus: working-class radicalism and organised Liberalism in England, 1868-1888 (forthcoming, Liverpool University Press, 2014)

- ‘Exporting the Westminster model: MPs and colonial governance in the Victorian era’, Britain and the World Journal (forthcoming, 2013)

- ‘”An inexplicable constituency?” Organised Liberalism in Nottingham, 1868-1880?, Midland History, 35, 1 (2010), 107-28

- ‘Dissident missionaries? Re-narrating the political strategy of the Social-Democratic Federation, 1884-1887?, Labour History Review, 37, 2 (2008), 157-77.

- ‘Triangular contests and caucus rhetoric at the 1885 general election’, Parliamentary History, 27, pt. 2 (2008), 215-35.