Marion Bowman
Marion Bowman is a British academic working on the borders of religious studies and folklore and ethnology. She is Professor Emerita in Religious Studies, The Open University where she was previously Professor of Vernacular Religion.
Bowman is a long-standing researcher into New Age and alternative spiritualities. Her research focus is predominantly contemporary spirituality in the UK and Europe, particularly "the practices and beliefs of individuals both within and on the margins of institutional religion".
Education
Bowman began her university education at Glasgow University but moved to Lancaster University to study under Prof Ninian Smart.Bowman completed her MA in Folklore at Memorial University, Newfoundland: her dissertation was on devotion to St Gerard Majella in Newfoundland. She completed her PhD at the University of Glamorgan in 1998 on 'Vernacular Religion and Contemporary Spirituality: Studies in Religious Experience and Expression'.
Career
From 1990 to 2000 Bowman was based at Bath Spa University in the department of Study of Religions.In 2000 Bowman joined the Religious Studies department at The Open University. She was Head of Department between 2010 and 2013.
Bowman has carried out a long term study of Glastonbury, seeing it as a sight of "significant pilgrimage destination and microcosm of contemporary spirituality and vernacular religiosity".
Bowman is a member of the Steering Committee of the Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion, based in the Classical Studies Department at the Open University. She was also a Co-Investigator on the Arts Humanities Research Council funded project Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present, which ran from 2014-2018.
The research of Bowman and Open University colleagues into alternative religions has been seen to have a number of impacts: both at an academic level in influencing research agendas but also in influencing a more positive public awareness of practitioners of alternative religions.
Recognition
Bowman has been a visiting lecturer or professor at a number of European universities, including the University of Oslo, Norway; University of Bayreuth, Germany; University of Pecs, Hungary and University of Tartu, Estonia.She is a former president of the British Association for the Study of Religions and a former Vice-President of both the European Association for the Study of Religions and Theology and Religious Studies UK.
Between 2002 and 2005, Bowman served as president of the Folklore Society: her Presidential Lectures derived from her research into Glastonbury and Newfoundland. She is an International Fellow of the American Folklore Society.