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School of Geography

Professor Alastair Owens

Alastair

Professor of Historical Geography, Director of Education

Email: a.j.owens@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 2750
Room Number: Geography Building, Room 217
Twitter: @AlastairHackney

Profile

I am an historical geographer and social and economic historian working on modern Britain since c.1800. I have a particular interest in London, which is also a core focus of my teaching interests and expertise. During 2024 my work is generously supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to pursue my project 'Inheritance, families and "wealthfare" in England and Wales, 18501930'.

I am the Chair of Trustees and a past President of the Geographical Association, the UK's leading subject association for teachers of geography

I recently completed a four-year term as Head of the School of Geography (20182022) and prior to that served as Deputy Dean for Education in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (20142017).

My main areas of current research are:

  • Anglicanism, 'parochial domesticity' and the crisis of the inner city in late twentieth-century Britain
  • The impacts of COVID-19 on domestic life (I am CI on the AHRC-funded project 'Stay Home: Rethinking the Domestic during the COVID-19 pandemic')
  • Families, wealth and inheritance in Britain, 18501930
  • Inclusive heritage in East London (including small projects with the Roman Road Trust and Care for St Anne's)

Previous areas of research include:

  • Wealth-holding in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of resources, gender and investment practices, household economic strategies and colonial wealth
  • Historical geographies of home, family and material culture
  • Philanthropy and institutional welfare provision in Victorian London

I believe strongly in the importance of collaboration and my work looks outward from my home discipline of Geography to include partnerships with Historians, Literary specialists, Archaeologists, Finance experts, and Economic Historians, (as well as with Geographers).

My PhD students (see 'Supervision' tab) are at the centre of my academic world and they have helped me to sustain a large number of exciting partnerships beyond the university, especially with colleagues in (East) London-based museums (e.g. Museum of Home, Museum of London, V&A) heritage organizations (e.g. Bishopsgate Institute, Museum of London Archaeology, Bank of England Archive), and local community and creative organizations (e.g. Roman Road Trust, Spitalfields Music).

Funding won individually or with colleagues to support research projects, studentships, public engagement and impact totals over £3 million and includes grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, Philomathia Foundation and Isaac Newton Trust.

I sit on the steering group of Queen Mary's Centre for Studies of Home, Centre for the Study of the Nineteenth Century and its Legacies and Centre for Childhood Cultures and am a Trustee of the Ragged School Museum (recently reopened after a major NLHF restoration project), located close to Queen Mary in Mile End. I was previously an Editor of the Journal of Victorian Culture.

In 2014 I served a member of the A-level Content Advisory Board, working with a panel of fellow geographers to determine the content of the Geography A-level that has been taught since 2016. I have also served as Corporation Member and latterly as Senior Vice Chair (including a period as acting Chair) of Governors (20142023) at Sir George Monoux College in Walthamstow, East London – a sixth form college with close links to Queen Mary.

Recent publications

  • Blunt, A., Burrell, K., Endfield, G., Lawrence, M., Nightingale, E., Owens, A., Waldock, J. and Wilkins, A. (2024) 'Home and neighbourhood: pandemic geographies of dwelling and belonging', in Cooper F. and Fitzgerald, D. (eds) Knowing COVID-19: The Pandemic and Beyond, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
  • Owens, A. (2023) 'Primary Geography Interview', Primary Geography, 112, 28–29
  • Owens, A. (2023) ‘Working better together: geographers and collaboration’, Teaching Geography, 48(2), 59–60.
  • Geiringer, D. and Owens A. (2022) 'Anglicanism, Race and the Inner City: Parochial Domesticity and Anti-Racism in the Long 1980s', History Workshop Journal 94, 223–245.
  • Owens, A. and Blunt, A. (2022) 'Home, place and COVID-19' Geography Review 36(2), 36–41
  • Owens, A. and Jeffries, N. (2016) ‘People and things on the move: domestic material culture, poverty and mobility in Victorian London’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 20(4), 804–27.
  • Owens, A. and Green, D. R. (2016) ‘Historical geographies of wealth: opportunities, institutions and accumulation, c.1800–1930’ in J. Beaverstock and I. Hay (eds) International Handbook of Wealth and the Super-Rich, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 43–67.
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