The Victorian Commons is delighted to announce that Dr. James Owen, a Research Fellow on the 1832-1868 project, has been jointly awarded the Wm. Roger Louis Prize for 2013. This prize is awarded for the best paper given at the British Scholar Society’s annual ‘Britain and the World’ conference, held this year at the University of Texas at Austin.
James’s paper on ‘Exporting the Westminster model: MPs and colonial governance in the Victorian era’ (presented in absentia) drew on his research on those members of Parliament who later went on to serve as governors in the colonies, looking in particular at Charles Poulett Thomson, governor-general of Canada, Arthur Charles Hamilton Gordon, lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, Charles Edward Grey, governor of Jamaica, and his successor Sir Henry Barkly. It will be published in a forthcoming issue of Britain and the World: Historical Journal of the British Scholar Society (Edinburgh University Press). The British Scholar Society can be followed on twitter here.
The Victorian Commons 