Estella Chen

Research Topic

'Witnessing Law in the English Courthouses, 1700-1850'

Supervisor: Bob Harris

My main academic interest lies in the social and cultural histories of justice and law in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on courtroom procedures, architecture, and the people who inhabited these spaces. My DPhil research investigates the experiences of ‘the public(s)’ as spectators in the courtrooms of metropolitan London and provincial assizes. It explores the changes and implications in the physical spaces of the court and their surrounding neighbourhoods, particularly spaces used by the public and press reporters to observe proceedings, while charting patterns of popular interest in justice and law through a systematic examination of the level of public participation in the proceedings. It also considers how collective reactions within the courtroom were expressed, and when and why these displays of 'popular judgement' were censored. 

My DPhil research is generously funded by the Clarendon Fund and The Queen's College, Oxford.