Joseph Boughey

Joseph Boughey was born in 1956. From an early age he developed a considerable interest in the built and natural environment. He worked in local government until 1989, and from then until retirement in 2010 was a university lecturer, at first in urban estate management and later in environmental management.

By default, he has become one of the leading historians of British inland waterways, but he has developed interests in other subjects, including the nature of bereavement, environmental policy and politics, movements to conserve the natural and built environments and environmental and transport history generally. Attempting to widen the scope of "transport history", he prefers the title of "transport, environmental and conservation historian", although "student of history" might be a better phrase than "historian".

Since retirement from formal paid employment, he has continued to research and write in these areas. He has delivered lectures on varied environmental subjects to various organisations, and appeared on BBC television programmes, The Golden Age of the Canals (2012) and The Golden Age of Steam Railways (2013).