Dr Jennifer Aston

I am an Associate Professor in Law and Head of Subject for Apprenticeships at Northumbria Law School, leading our solicitor and policing apprenticeship schemes.

I joined Northumbria in 2017 and previously held posts at Oxford, Birmingham and Hull. My research interests focus on the relationship between gender and financial and legal institutions. I am the author of Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century England (Palgrave, 2016) and Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in Nineteenth Century England and Wales (Hart, 2024), winner of the SLS Margaret Brazier Second Prize 2025 and shortlisted for the Hart-SLSA Book Prize and the Socio-Legal Theory and History Prize 2026.

I became Chair of the Economic History Society’s Publications Committee in April 2026, and I am a Series Editor for People, Markets, Goods (Boydell and Brewer) and New Studies in Economic and Social History (Cambridge University Press). I am also a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.

My ESRC-funded project on the history of divorce, 1857–1923, concluded in June 2026, and I am now writing this research up as a monograph and an edited collection. I am also continuing work on Bankruptcy in Edwardian Britain, 1901–1914, funded by an Economic History Society Carnevali Small Research Grant. From September 2026, I am Co-Investigator with Professor Eloise Moss on a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, Understanding the Limits of Autonomy in Twentieth-Century Britain.

In 2026/7, I am teaching on Legal History (LW6026). I welcome enquiries about postgraduate study in economic, social, gender and legal history in nineteenth century Britain and the wider world.