Anne Bottomley

Anne Bottomley took degrees at the University of Sussex, London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge. She joined Kent Law School in 1987. Before joining Kent, she was active in women’s movement politics, especially in the feminist legal collective, Rights of Women. She was a founding member of Critical Legal Conference, and the Women's Caucus of CLC (which, in 1985, organized the first international conference on Women and Law). She was a founding board member of the journals Feminist Legal Studies, and Law and Critique. After editing (in 1996) ‘Feminist Perspectives on the Foundational Subjects of Law’, she established and jointly edited (with Sally Sheldon) the Routledge ‘Feminist Perspectives on Law’ series, which published 14 volumes of essays.

Initially teaching, researching and publishing in family law, she moved into working in property law and trusts. She developed an innovative Foundations of Property Law course, as well as an elective entitled ‘Politics of Property’.

Her property law research has focused on three main strands of property scholarship: domestic trusts, architecture of the city; and ‘alternative property practices’ of commons, communal and community property. Informed by her background in the humanities, she draws from and explores literature, film and art in her scholarship.

Anne’s Interest in how topography contours property law issues, led into an engagement with the locally contentious issue of access to beaches. A project which was initially focused on the development and potential of English (and Welsh) law, became extended into comparative research, including an exploration of the history of public trust doctrine (and analogous doctrines and practices). She has undertaken field work across the Caribbean archipelago, focusing on (to date) Jamaica and St Lucia. Published papers, as well as conference and seminar presentations, have been used to write chapters for a monograph on the significance and law of beaches across common law/civilian jurisdictions (and the histories, cultures and distinctive topographies which inform issues of access). This project is now framed by, and intersects with, a broader one on ‘legacies of enslavement’ between ‘entangled islands’. Again, a monograph has been developed through the presentation and publication of papers. This project utilizes literary materials as well as law and legal archives to trace ‘legacies’, in particular in relation to contemporary issues across the Caribbean archipelago concerning family, paternity, property and land. Anne’s most recently published material drawn from this project focuses on the historical significance of ‘reputed children’, and the contemporary legacies derived from this inheritance.