Professor Frances Bowen

Professor Bowen became the University of Essex’s seventh permanent Vice-Chancellor on 1 August 2025.

Internationally recognised for her research in corporate environmental strategy, she has over 30 years of experience in higher education in the UK, Canada, the USA and Singapore. She joined Essex from Queen Mary University of London, where she was Vice-Principal and Executive Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Before her role at Queen Mary, Professor Bowen was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Social Sciences at the University of East Anglia and later also Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International. Prior to this, she was Dean of the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary. Having earned degrees at the University of Oxford, Northeastern University (USA), and the University of Bath, she went on to progressively more senior academic appointments at the University of Sheffield and the University of Calgary (Canada). She has also held senior visiting fellowships at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at University of Oxford and at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Since the mid-90s, she has helped develop and lead the research field of corporate environmental strategy addressing issues such as business responses to climate change, corporate water strategies and corporate greenwashing. She was the UK’s first Professor of Strategy in Society and has served as Division Chair within the Academy of Management (USA) and as President of GRONEN, the leading European business sustainability academic association. Since participating in an ESRC-funded knowledge exchange fellowship at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2013, Professor Bowen often gives advice and evidence to regulators and government departments on how to influence corporate environmental behaviours.

Professor Bowen is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She has served on a variety of boards including a digital education start-up (Studious Education), international education entities (INTO UEA; QM Paris), a technology transfer company (QM Innovation), and a national environmental think tank (the Pembina Institute).