Cameron Bowman

Research Topic: An Intellectual History of Slavery in the British Empire, Beginnings to 1772

Research

My doctoral research investigates justifications of slavery in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century in the British Empire. I focus on ideas about permissible enslavement, depictions of African natural inferiority, the European perception of Africa, and debates about Christianizing enslaved people. Broadly conceived, my project aims to understand debates about slavery prior to the rise of abolitionism in Britain and explain the intellectual and cultural heritage from which slavery drew support. The project will contribute to scholarship on a pressing contemporary issue: understanding the historical legitimations of relationships of subordination.

Peer-Review Publications 

'Rev. Robert Robertson, Edmund Gibson and the Defence of Slavery,' Slavery and Abolition, 8 July 2025.  

Reviews and Essays

'Review of Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution by Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson,' Economic History Review, 20 November 2024. 

(co-author), 'Aesthetics and gender in Richard Whatmore's The End of Enlightenment' History of European Ideas, 22 April 2025.

Teaching 

Tutor for 'British Politics and Government since 1900', Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Oxford, 2024-present. 

Academic Profile

My graduate studies are being supported thanks to the Angus Hawkins Scholarship at Keble College, which I was awarded in 2023.

I completed my undergraduate degree in History and Spanish at the University of Exeter and my Master's in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London and University College London

Supervisor: Ian McBride