Southowram (/ˈsaʊθɑːrəm/ sow-THAR-əm) is a village and former civil parish in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It stands on hill top between Halifax and Brighouse, on the south side of the Shibden Valley. Northowram is on the northern side of the valley. Southowram falls within the Town ward of Calderdale Council. The village is included within the Halifax built-up area as defined by the Office for National Statistics.

The name Owram derives from the plural form of the Old English ofer meaning 'a flat topped ridge'.

Southowram was historically a township in the ancient parish of Halifax. By 1866 part of the township was included in the borough boundaries of Halifax. In 1866 the remainder of the township was declared to be a local government district, administered by a local board. Later that year the whole township was made a civil parish.

In 1894 local boards were reconstituted as urban district councils under the Local Government Act 1894, which also said that parishes could not straddle district boundaries. The part of Southowram parish within Halifax borough was therefore transferred to that parish, leaving a reduced Southowram parish covering just the urban district. In 1931 the parish had a population of 2,570.

The parish and urban district of Southowram was abolished on 1 April 1937, with most of the area, including the village itself, being added to the parish and municipal borough of Brighouse and a smaller part going to Elland. Brighouse Municipal Borough was abolished on 31 March 1974, becoming part of the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale. No successor parish was created for the former borough and so Southowram is directly administered by Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council.

Parts of Southowram's village centre were demolished and rebuilt in the 1970s and 1980s, but many older buildings remain, as do the ancient stocks on Towngate. Old buildings were lost on New Street and were replaced by council housing. More such housing is to be found in the lower part of the village. Southowram retains in the main, however, a mixture of older historic and new housing, council owned and private housing.

A number of old halls and farms which survived until the 1940s and 1950s were lost in subsequent decades.

In 1837, at the age of 19, Emily Brontë came to teach at the three-storey house on Law Lane which was then an exclusive boarding school. She stayed for only about six months, however, because of the strict lifestyle demanded. She was homesick and in a collection of letters, her sister Charlotte wrote about how Emily had to work from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day and was more of a governess than a teacher. Emily wrote poetry while at Law Hill and became fascinated by the story of intrigue and feuding which surrounded the house's builder, Jack Sharp, and his near neighbours, the Walker family of Walterclough Hall. It is said she reflected the story in the plot of her novel Wuthering Heights and that the central character Heathcliff was based on Sharp himself. A plaque on the wall commemorates Brontë's stay between 1837 and 1838.