Remembering George Bowron

Message from Professor Lucinda Platt

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of George Bowron on 25th September 2025. George had graduated with a first-class degree in 2024 and had embarked on social work training at Durham University, where he was, as anticipated, excelling. George was a very able, mature and insightful student, with an understated and somewhat laconic manner, and dapper appearance He was well informed, highly committed to doing the best for others in his extensive youth work, knowledgeable about policy debates, and strong in his pursuit of academic excellence. His parents were immensely proud of him. And he himself was proud of what he managed to achieve. This comes through in the picture of him at graduation.

Yet these achievements came in the face of substantial health challenges. George struggled throughout his studies with chronic illnesses. These impacted his attendance at lectures and seminars and his participation in university life. I used to have my supervisions with him in the library because my temporary office at the top of St Clement's could not be accessed by lift, and at one period we had to meet online, when George was unable to leave his building due to building work. His application for a wheelchair finally materialised towards the end of this time at LSE, and enhanced his ability to take part in both academic and social events, which he had often missed out on. He was regularly hospitalised, including the night before one of his final exams, and sometimes due to the contraindications of drugs he was taking for other conditions. When I commiserated with him on one of the latest setbacks, he would typically reply with his half-smile and understated brevity – ‘yes, it’s not good’. These circumstances make his academic success, and simply his ability to manage all his affairs, including applying for social work places and scholarships, and dealing with various agencies, while completing summative assessments and working on his dissertation, all the more impressive.

George completed his dissertation on the experience of applying for and claiming personal independent payments, a highly salient contemporary policy issue on which he shed fresh light. Unusually for an undergraduate dissertation, this involved getting approval from the LSE Ethics Committee, due to the vulnerable population involved. But I had no hesitation in encouraging George to take this forward, since his insight, experience and general maturity clearly justified it – and fortunately the Ethics Committee agreed! We had many interesting and lively discussions about the dissertation, and he was a keen researcher and highly responsive to feedback. His accomplished work on the dissertation was rewarded with a first, and I hope to see it posthumously published in the Department Working Paper Series – something George himself would clearly have welcomed as one step in his long-term plans to return and undertake a PhD at LSE, a place where, according to his parents, he could most be ‘George’. George had so much more to contribute, and I am deeply saddened that we will now not see him back here himself.

Lucinda Platt, 3rd October 2025

I’m greatly saddened by the news that George Bowron has passed away. George was a student in my SP201 course in 2022-23. I still remember the excellent project he did for the course, which explored why and how young people became involved in politics. He interviewed former members of the Youth Cabinet and the Youth Parliament, organisations he himself had been actively involved in and deeply passionate about. I was not fully aware of the extent of the health challenges George faced during his studies, but I remember his visits to my office hours, the thoughtful exchanges we had at the poster presentation, and his genuine passion for learning and for what he studied. It is deeply saddening that his life has been cut short.

Shuang Chen, 13 October 2025