Overview

Richard is the Module Convenor for Land Law. Richard has previously convened modules in UK public law, jurisprudence, and law & literature. His teaching excellence has been recognised in the 2017 Student Guild/FXU Teaching Awards (Best Undergraduate Supervisor). He holds a Senior Fellowship of the HEA. 

Richard joined the Law School at Exeter in August 2012, having held previous positions at Queen Mary and Birkbeck. In his doctoral thesis Richard looked at how law can be created in an act of artifice, examining the role of mythology and music in the maintenance of sovereign power. His research has taken him to the writings of James Joyce, to early twentieth century Irish political history, and to the psychological writings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

More recently, Richard has taken an interest in housing law and policy, and theoretical dimensions of property.

Richard has considerable experience in teaching and supervising students in literature, psychoanalytic theory, jurisprudence and philosophy – as well as law. In respect of his interests in law as practised in the law courts, Richard keeps up to date with developments in UK administrative law, migration law, and housing law. He is particularly interested in how these areas of law impact upon or produce the conditions of poverty.

Before embarking on an academic career, Richard worked in drug and alcohol counselling and welfare rights.

Publications

Richard Bowyer, "Regulatory Threats to the Law Degree: The Solicitors Qualifying Examination and the Purpose of Law Schools," Law and Critique (2019), 30, 117 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-019-09243-w

Richard Bowyer, “Jonathan Goldman (ed) Joyce and the Law,” The Review of English Studies (2018) https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgy085

Richard Bowyer, "Law, Psychoanalysis, Society: Taking the Unconscious Seriously, by Maria Aristodemou." Law & Literature, (2017) 29(2), 371

Richard Bowyer, "Joyce's politics in exile: Music and motif between two nations" in Karin van Marle and Stewart Motha (eds), Genres of critique: Law, aesthetics and liminality (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2014).

Richard Bowyer, "The Laws of James Joyce: Myth, Music, Mind." PhD Thesis. University of London, 2013.

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External impact and engagement

Richard contributes to the SCuLE research group at Exeter, and has developed numerous relationships with researchers and scholars in Europe, Africa and North America. He regularly engages with contemporary issues in migration law and he supports the workings of regular and ad hoc research groups, conferences and other collaborations.

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Teaching

Modules taught

• LAW2017 - Land Law
• LAW2017B - Land Law
• LAW3047 - Dissertation
• LAW3047A - Comparative Law Dissertation
• LAWM909 - PGT Induction

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More information

Richard has held the following administrative/leadership roles:

Currently:

Programme Director, BA in Legal Studies

Aspire Mentor/Assessor

Previously:

Director of Workload and Community (member of the Law Executive Team, 2020 - 2021)

Elected member of University Senate (2016 - 2020)

College Director of Taught Programmes (2018 - 2020)

Director of Education (2017 - 2018)

Deputy Director of Education (2016 - 2017)

Senior Personal Tutor (2014 - 2017)

Director of Admissions (2013 - 2015)

Year 2 Coordinator (2013 - 2014)

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