Professor Alastair Owens

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, 1850–1930'.

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 (2018–2022) and prior to that served as Deputy Dean for Education in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2014–2017).

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, 1850–1930
• 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 (2014–2023) 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.

Teaching

I have always found teaching  to be one of the most rewarding aspects of being an academic and I enjoy the challenges of finding different ways of engaging students with my own research and scholarship, as well as that of others. My belief is that people learn best in a supportive environment which offers a variety of opportunities to develop skills and understanding. Consequently my teaching frequently extends well-beyond the classroom and the traditional format of the lecture. Teaching modules on London provides the opportunity to explore the city on foot or to visit and work with my friends and colleagues in various London museums. Fieldwork is central to my teaching and for many years I have enjoyed taking first year undergraduate students to other parts of the UK to understand how those regions have experienced economic and social change. With colleagues I also run a module examining the historical geography of the fascinating North American city of Boston, which culminates in a week-long visit to that city. I am also an enthusiast of new learning technologies, developing a range of on-line resources to help support students’ learning and incorporating social media into my teaching.

I have been nominated for teaching prizes on several occasions and won the College’s Drapers’ Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. I have also led three small teaching and learning projects on developing students’ quantitative research skills, enhancing their employability through building relationships with alumni, and designing a new overseas field work module.

Undergraduate Teaching

• GEG4106 Reinventing Britain
• GEG5149/6149 Boston Reworked: The Making of a North American City
• GEG6117 Victorian London: Economy, Society and Culture

Postgraduate Teaching

• GEG7120 Geographical Thought and Practice

External Teaching

I also lead occasional walks or give lectures on London’s history and geography for a range of other North American universities. Between 2002 and 2017 I led a course on nineteenth and twentieth Century London for the University of California London Fall Programme, co-taught in the latter years with the brilliant London historian and writer Sarah Wise.

External Examining

I currently sit as an External Member of the Open University's Qualification and Assessment Committee. I have held previous external examining roles at the  University of Brighton, Institute of Historical Research and University of London International Programmes.

Some student feedback

• ‘The most valuable aspect of the course was Alastair’s wonderful attitude and teaching style. The well-organised lectures, the field walks and the way that Alastair makes everything so interesting and exciting’
• ‘His lectures were fun, lively and coherent. I’m naming my first son after Alastair’
• ‘Not only is he passionate about what he teaches, he just ‘gets’ students – pure and simple’
• ‘This is probably the best module I took this year – always looked forward to Fridays!’

Research

Research Interests:

Active Projects

Anglicanism, 'parochial domesticity' and the crisis of the inner city in late twentieth-century Britain
With David Geiringer (History) supported by Queen Mary University of London.

This project explores the Church of England's response to the so-called 'crisis' of the inner city in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s from the perspective of the clergy living and working in its urban parishes. The inner-city vicarage is a key focus of our research. We use it as a vantage point for understanding religious interventions into the changing city. Far from simply being a place of residence for clergy and their families, the clerical home was frequently an important site of social action. A place of hospitality and charity, shelter and refuge, faith-based organising and political critique, the boundaries between the public and private, home and work, the sacred and the secular became increasingly blurred in the modern clerical home. The vicarage front door was a threshold to the tensions, challenges and opportunities of the surrounding city. We conceptualize this unique, outward form of clerical living as ‘parochial domesticity’ and argue that the spatial embeddedness of the inner-city clerical home afforded distinctive opportunities for reworking the conditions of the inner city. Focusing on London an Liverpool, the project examines a range of themes including: economic change, deprivation and class realignment; racism, urban unrest and anti-racist responses; shifting gender roles and family relationships: and the changing role of Anglican faith in religiously diverse urban communities. A article on the Church and anti-racism will appear in History Workshop Journal in late 2022, and a book is in progress.

 

Stay Home: Rethinking the Domestic during the COVID-19 pandemic
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. £490,000 2020-22, CI with Alison Blunt (PI), Kathy Burrell (CI, University of Liverpool), Georgina Endfield (CI, University of Liverpool). Postdoctoral Researchers: Miri Lawrence, Eithne Nightingale, Annabelle Wilkins (Queen Mary) and Jacqueline Waldock (University of Liverpool)

Staying at home has been a key strategy for saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. This major collaborative project (part of the UKRI Rapid response to COVID-19) explores how has the pandemic changed our relationship to home. The project has three strands: Documenting Home (documenting how homes during COVID have been represented in political debate and media coverage, as well as by artists, photographers and museums professionals); Practising home (examining the spaces, practices and meanings of home during the pandemic by interviewing people from different faith communities and minoritized ethnic backgrounds, including people who have migrated to the UK); and Mapping home (exploring  children and young people’s changing conceptualisations of home, by getting them to produce maps of their home places and recording their accounts of life during the pandemic). Outputs include several articles, a book, reports, films, and podcasts. See the project website Stay Home Stories for further information.

 

Inheritance, families and the market in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain
Funded by the Philomathia Foundation and the Isaac Newton Trust, £109,284, 2014-. With Martin Daunton (University of Cambridge) and David Green (King’s College London) and Postdoctoral Research Assistants Sam Shave and Lesley Hoskins (University of Cambridge).

This project explores the social, economic and political significance of inheritance for middle-class families in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. It builds earlier work on this theme (also, in part, with David Green). Through a series of detailed empirical studies, our research has explored themes such as the intergenerational transmission of resources and the role of women in generating and passing on wealth. At a conceptual level, we have characterised such transfers as a form of middle-class ‘wealth-fare’ provision thereby seeking to widen the historiography of welfare beyond narrow concerns with emergent social policy and the origins of the welfare state – largely directed at support for the poor – to the wider regimes of assistance and provision that sustained people’s everyday lives. The current project will develop some of these arguments and will eventually lead to a book exploring the importance of inheritance and family property transmission for understanding social inequality and intergenerational well-being and justice. 

 

Inclusive heritage and place-making in East London
A number of outward-facing smaller projects link to this interest. This includes a collaboration with the Roman Road Trust 'Rediscovering the Bow Heritage Trail' (Funded by Queen Mary's Centre for Public Engagement £10,000, Network QM £5,000 and other sources, PI with Justine Kenyon (Queen Mary) and Rosie Vincent (Roman Road Trust)) which celebrates and extends an existing local heritage trail by developing a new online interactive platform and creating new heritage more reflective of the the neighbourhood's diverse communities and histories. With Care for St Anne's a Student Bursary project 'Limehouse Lives' (Funded by Queen Mary Humanities and Social Sciences £1,000, with Ed Legon (Business and Management, Queen Mary) and Researcher Livonia Ayugi-Okello (English, Queen Mary)) is exploring the local and global heritage of individuals associated with the famous Limehouse Hawksmoor Church.

 

See also 'Supervision' for active PhD projects with external collaborators.

 

Selected earlier research projects

Empire, Consumption and Domestic Material Culture in London, c. 1600-1800: Tracing the East India Company in the Metropolitan Archaeological Record
Funded as part of Queen Mary’s QResearchers  scheme, £4,461 2015.  PI with Rupert Featherby (Museum of London Archaeology) and three undergraduate and one postgraduate students at Queen Mary.

Making the invisible visible: enabling audiences to ‘see’ archive collections.
Funded by the Creativeworks London, Creativeworks Voucher, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, £15,000. 2014, PI with Eleanor John from the Museum of the Home and Research Assistant Ananda Rutherford (Queen Mary)

Making imperial citizens: Thomas Barnardo and the preparation of children for migration in London’s East End, c. 1870–1920
Funded by Queen Mary’s Centre for the Study of Migration, £2,975, 2013, PI with Tim Brown and Postdoctoral Research Assistant Lesley Hoskins (both at Queen Mary, University of London).

Living with the past at home: domestic pre-habitation and inheritance
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, AH/I022090/1, 2011-2014, £291,336. CI with Catherine Nash (PI), Alison Blunt (CI) and Postdoctoral Research Assistant Caron Lipman (all at Queen Mary University of London)

Mapping philanthrocapitalism and corporate community engagement in East London
Funded by Queen Mary’s Centre for Public Engagement, October 2012– June 2013, £9,820. CI with Cathy McIlwaine (PI), Alison Blunt (CI), Jane Wills (CI) and Postdoctoral Research Assistant Johanna Wadsley (all at Queen Mary, University of London).

Common wealth? Wealth-holding and investment in Britain and its settler colonies, 1850–1930
Funded by the British Academy and Association of Commonwealth Universities, July 2011, £5,000. PI with Martin Shanahan (University of South Australia).

Women investors in England and Wales, 1870–1930
Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Res-000-23-1435, 2005 to 2008, £250,219. CI with David Green (PI, King’s College London), Josephine Maltby (University of York), Janette Rutterford (Open University) and Research Assistants Steven Ainscough, Carry, van Lieshout, Carien van Mourik and Claire Swan.

Living in Victorian London: material culture and every day domestic life in the nineteenth-century metropolis
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, AH/E002285/1 2007 to 2008, £61,000. PI with Museum of London Archaeology (Nigel Jeffries and Rupert Featherby) and Postdoctoral Researcher Assistant Karen Wehner.

Publications

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
• Blunt, A., Burrell, K., Endfield, G., Lawrence, M., Nightingale, E., Owens, A., Waldock, J. and Wilkins, A. (2022) At Home in London during COVID-19: Policy Recommendations and Key Findings, Stay Home Stories, Queen Mary University of London, London, 35pp.
• Burrell, K. Lawrence, M., Wilkins, A., Blunt, A., Caurua-Finkel, L., Graham, P., Key, A., Endfield, G., Waldock, J., Nightingale, E., and Owens, A. (2021) At Home in Liverpool during COVID-19, Stay Home Stories, Queen Mary University of London, London, 27pp.
• 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., John, E. and Blunt, A. (2016) ‘At home with collaboration: building and sustaining a successful university-museum partnership’, in M. Shiach and T. Virani (eds) Cultural Policy, Innovation and the Creative Economy: Creative Collaborations in Arts and Humanities Research, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
• Rawlings-Smith, E., Oakes, S. and Owens A. (2016) Changing Places, The Geographical Association, Sheffield ISBN: 978-1-84337-389-1 (Paperback).
• 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.
• Blunt, A., John, E., Lipman, C. and Owens A. (2013) Centre for Studies of Home: a partnership between Queen Mary, University of London and the Geffrye Museum of the Home’ in R. Craggs, H. Geoghegan and I. M. Keighren (eds). Collaborative Geographies: The politics, practicalities, and promise of working together, Historical Geography Research Group (London), pp. 111–125
• Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (2013) 'Geographies of wealth: real estate and personal property ownership in England and Wales, 1870–1902' Economic History Review, 66(3), pp. 848–72.
• Owens, A. and Green D. R. (2012) 'The final reckoning: using death duty records to research wealth holding in nineteenth-century England and Wales' Archives, 38(126), pp. 1–21.
• Green D. R., Owens, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (2011, eds) Men, Women and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth and Investment, 1850–1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 328pp. ISBN 9780199593767 (Hardback)
• Rutterford, J., Green D. R., Maltby, J. and Owens, A. (2011) ‘Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c.1870–1935’ Economic History Review 64 (1), pp. 157–87.
• Green D. R., Owens, A., Swan, C. and Van Lieshout, C. (2011) ‘Assets of the dead: wealth, investment and modernity in nineteenth-century England and Wales’, in Green D. R., Owens, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (eds) Men, Women and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth and Investment, 1850–1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 54–80.
• Green D. R., Owens, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (2011) ‘Introduction’, in Green D. R., Owens, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (eds) Men, Women and Money: Perspectives on Gender, Wealth and Investment, 1850–1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 1–30.
• Owens, A. Jeffries, N., Wehner, K. and Featherby, R. (2010) ‘Fragments of the modern city: material culture and the rhythms of everyday life in Victorian London’, Journal of Victorian Culture 15 (2), pp. 212–225.
• Addabbo, T., Arrizabalaga, M.-P., Borderías, C. and Owens, A. (2010, eds) Gender Inequalities, Households and the Production of Well-Being in Modern Europe, Ashgate, Farnham. 340pp. ISBN 978-0-7546-7968-4 (Hardback)
• Addabbo, T., Arrizabalaga, M.-P., Borderías, C. and Owens, A. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in Addabbo, T., Arrizabalaga, M.-P., Borderías, C. and Owens, A. (eds) Gender Inequalities, Households and the Production of Well-Being in Modern Europe, Ashgate, Farnham, pp. 1–25.
• Owens, A. Jeffries, N., Featherby R. and Wehner, K. (2010) From the Unusual to the Banal: The Archaeology of Everyday Life in Victorian London, Museum of London Archaeology Research Matters, No. 4, Museum of London: London.
• Green, D. R., Owens, A., Rutterford, J. and Maltby, J. (2009) ‘Lives in the balance: age, gender and assets in late nineteenth-century England and Wales’. Continuity and Change, 24 (2), pp. 307–335.
• Rutterford, J., Maltby, J., Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (2009) ‘Researching shareholding and investment in England and Wales: approaches, sources and methods’, Accounting History 14 (3), pp. 269–292.
• Jeffries, N., Owens, A., Hicks, D., Featherby, R. and Wehner, K. (2009) ‘Rematerialising metropolitan histories? People, places and things in modern London’ in M. Palmer and A. Horning (eds) Crossing Paths or Sharing Tracks: Future Directions in the Archaeological Study of post-1550 Britain and Ireland, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, pp. 323–50.
• Owens, A. (2008) ‘Una inverió oculta? Dones i empresa a Anglaterra, 1750–1900’, Recerques: Historia, economía y cultura, 56, pp. 61–89. English language version: ‘A hidden investment? Women and business in England, c.1750–1900’.
• Docherty, A., Owens, A., Asadi-Lari, M., Petchey, R., Williams, J., and Carter, Y. H. (2008) ‘Knowledge and information needs of informal caregivers in palliative care: a qualitative systematic review’, Palliative Medicine, 22 (2): pp. 153–171.
• Owens, A. (2008) Independent Geographical Study. University of London International Programmes. University of London Press, London (Paperback). 152 pp. Reissued 2011.
• Gunn, S. and Owens, A. (2006) ‘The modern city and the transformation of nature’, Cultural Geographies, 13 (4), pp. 491–496.
• Owens, A., Green, D. R., Bailey, C. and Kay, A. (2006) ‘A measure of worth: probate valuations, personal wealth and in indebtedness in England, 1810–40,’ Historical Research 79 (305), pp. 383–403.
• Beachy, R., Craig, B. and Owens, A. (2006, eds) Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, Berg, Oxford. ISBN 1845201841 (Hardback) and ISBN 184520185X (Paperback), 240pp.
• Craig, B., Beachy, R. and Owens, A. (2006) ‘Introduction’ in Beachy, R., Craig, B. and Owens, A. (eds) Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, Berg, Oxford, pp. 1–19.
• Owens, A. (2006) ‘“Making some provision for the contingencies to which their sex is particularly liable”: women and investment in early nineteenth-century England’ in Beachy, R., Craig, B. and Owens, A. (eds) Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, Berg, Oxford, pp. 20–35.
• Randhawa, G. and Owens, A. (2006) ‘Palliative care’ in Ali, N., Kalra, V. S. and Sayyid, S. (eds) A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, Hurst Publishers, London, pp. 256–58.
• Owens, A. (2006) ‘Qualitative research methodologies in Human Geography’ in Spence, N. (ed.) Research Methods in Geography, University of London External Degree Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, pp. 95–108.
• Owens, A. (2004) ‘Property, power and the city in Great Britain’, Journal of Urban History, 30 (2), pp. 299–310.
• Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (2004, eds) Family Welfare: Gender, Property and Inheritance since the Seventeenth Century, Contribution to Family Studies, Number 18: Praeger, Westport, Connecticut and London, 305pp.  ISBN: 0313323283 (Hardback).
• Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (2004) ‘Introduction: family welfare and the welfare family’, in Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (eds) Family Welfare: Gender, Property and Inheritance since the Seventeenth Century, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut and London, pp. 1–30.
• Randhawa, G. and Owens, A. (2004) ‘Palliative care for minority ethnic groups: a UK case study’, European Journal of Palliative Care, 11 (1), pp.19–22.
• Randhawa, G. and Owens, A. (2004) ‘The meanings of cancer and perceptions of cancer services among South Asians in Luton, UK’, British Journal of Cancer, 91 (1), pp. 62–68.
• Owens A. and Randhawa, G. (2004) ‘“It’s different from my culture; they’re very different”: providing community-based ‘culturally competent’ palliative care for South Asians in the UK’, Health and Social Care in the Community, 12 (5), pp. 414–421
• Owens, A. and Randhawa, G. (2004) ‘Caring for South Asian patients: progress and challenges in palliative care’ Cancer Nursing Practice, 3 (3), pp. 8–10.
• Randhawa, G., Owens, A., Fitches, R. and Khan, Z. (2003) ‘Communication in the development of culturally competent palliative care services in the UK: a case study’, International Journal of Palliative Nursing, 9 (1), pp. 24–31.
• Owens, A. (2003) ‘Space, Place and Identity in Victorian Britain: Conference Report’, Journal of Historical Geography 29 (2), pp. 273–4.
• Green, D. and Owens, A. (2003) ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows and wealth holding in England and Wales, c. 1800–1860’, Economic History Review, LVI (3), pp. 510–536.
• Randhawa, G., Owens, A., Fitches, R., and Khan, Z. (2002) ‘“They tend to look after their own”: providing culturally competent palliative care for South Asian patients with terminal cancer in Luton’, in McGee, P. (ed.) Culturally Competent Healthcare: Do we Understand it? How do we do it?, Middlesex University and the Foundation of Nursing Studies, Birmingham, pp. 56–60.
• Owens, A. (2002) ‘Inheritance and the life-cycle of firms in the early industrial revolution’, Business History, 44 (1), pp. 21–46.
• Owens, A. (2001) ‘Property, gender and the life course: inheritance and family welfare provision in early nineteenth-century England’, Social History, 26 (3), pp. 297–315.
• Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (2000, eds) Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Historical Urban Studies Series: Ashgate, Aldershot, 284pp. ISBN: 0754600815 (Hardback).
• Owens, A. and Stobart, J. (2000) ‘Introduction’, in Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (eds) Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 1–25.
• Owens, A. (2000) ‘Property, will making and estate disposal in an industrial town, 1800–1857’, in Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (eds) Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 79–107.
• Owens, A. (1999) ‘Conference report: wealth, poverty and the Victorians’, London Journal, 24 (2), pp. 70–73.
• Owens, A. (1997) ‘Thoughts on property, class and materiality: inheritance law, property transfer and middle class formation in nineteenth-century England’, in P. Shurmer-Smith, ed., All over the place: proceedings of a postgraduate conference in social and cultural geography, Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, pp. 107–112.
• Green, D. R. and Owens, A. (1997) ‘Metropolitan estates of the middle class 1800–50: probates and death duties revisited’, Historical Research, 70 (173), pp. 294–311.

Supervision

Research Students
I supervise students working on a variety of topics linked to my wider research interests. I welcome enquiries from prospective students interested in working with me on a broad range of themes including: the historical geographies of wealth and investment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; historical geographies of home, material culture and everyday life; museums and heritage; and aspects of the social, economic and environmental history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain, especially London.

I have a good track record of obtaining funds for, and working with, museums and other external organizations to supervise postgraduate research projects and am always interested in exploring new opportunities for collaboration.

Current students

• Daniel Cesarani 'History of Heritage in East London: Identity, Space and the Politics of Urban Change' self funded, supervised with Nadia Valman (English and Drama).
• Tom Chivers 'In the Flow of Things: Encounters with the Mudlarks of the Thames Foreshore', (with Museum of London Archaeology) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award, supervised with Ed Legon (School of Business and Management), and Claire Harris and Cat Gibbs (Museum of London Archaeology).
• Jack Hanlon ‘Meat, markets and masculinity: Smithfield in the late twentieth century’ (with Museum of London) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, supervised with Will Monteith, Regan Koch and Dom Sergi and Alex Werner (London Museum).
• Sarah Sayeed 'A musical feast for the Mile Enders’? Music, social inclusion and community engagement in London’s East End, c.1890 to the present' (with Spitalfields Music) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, supervised with Paul Edlin (Music) and Sarah Gee (Spitalfields Music).

Former Students

• Dr Ansar Ahmed Ullah 'The Bengali Anti-Racist Movement: Mobilisation, Institutionalisation and Legacies of 1978’ (with Bishopsgate Institute and London Borough of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, supervised with Sam Halvorsen (Geography) and Stef Dickers (Bishopsgate Institute) and Tamsin Bookey (Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives).
• Dr Laura Roberts ‘Staying afloat: making home and creating place on London’s canals’ (with Canal and River Trust and Museum of the Home) ESRC 1+3 CASE, supervised with Geraldene Wharton, Sarah Lee (Canal and River Trust) and Vanessa Meade (Museum of the Home).
• Dr Jenny Doyle ‘Transmitting In/equality across Borders: Shifting Inheritance Practices and Outcomes among Indian Migrants in contemporary London’ (with the Runnymede Trust) ESRC CASE, Supervised with Kavita Datta (Geography) and the Runnymede Trust.
• Dr Charlotte Slark ‘East is East: a social and cultural history of the V&A Museum of Childhood, 1973–2000’ (with V&A) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award, supervised with Kiera Vaclavik (Comparative Literature) Spike Sweeting (Royal College of Art) and Helen Charman (V&A).
• Dr Shabna Begum ‘Stay and fight: the Bengali squatters’ movement, 'home' and belonging in the East End of London, in the 1970s’, Queen Mary Principal's Studentship, supervised with Kavita Datta (Geography) and Olivia Sheringham (Birkbeck). 
• Dr Norma Cohen 'The Economy of Sacrifice? War Bond Holders and the Financing of the First World War, 1914–25' (with Bank of England) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, supervised with Dan Todman (History) and Mike Anson (Bank of England).
• Dr Lucie Glasheen 'Children’s play, urban spaces and the transformation of East London in text, image and film, 1930–1939', Queen Mary Principal’s Studentship, supervised with Kiera Vaclavik (Comparative Literature).
• Dr Oliver Gibson 'Health, Environment and the Institutional Care of Children in Late-Victorian London' (with Ragged School Museum) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, supervised with Tim Brown (Geography) and Erica Davies (Ragged School Museum).
• Dr Mary Guyatt 'The Non-European World in the Lives of British Children, 1870–1930' (with V&A Museum of Childhood) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, part of extended programme ‘The Child and the World: Empire, Diaspora and Global Citizenship’, supervised with Kiera Vaclavik (Comparative Literature), Rhian Harris and Catherine Howell (formerly of V&A Museum of Childhood).
• Dr Emily Harris 'Interfaith Connections at Home: Domestic Space, Practice and Dialogue in Contemporary London' (with Museum of Home) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, part of extended programme ‘Home and religion: space, practice and community in London from the seventeenth century to the present’, supervised with Alison Blunt (Geography) and Laura Bedford (Museum of the Home).
• Dr Lesley Hoskins Reading the Inventory: Household Goods, Domestic Cultures and Difference in England and Wales, 1841–1881 (with Museum of Home) PhD , ESRC 1+3 CASE Studentship supervised with Eleanor John (Museum of the Home).
• Dr Kristin Hussey 'Imperial Medicine in the Global City: Exploring the impact of Empire on London’s ‘Healthscapes’, 1850–1930', Queen Mary Principal's Studentship, supervised with Tim Brown (Geography).
• Dr Laura Humphreys 'Domestic Labour, Metropolitan Middle-Class households and the Wider World, 1850–1914' (with Museum of the Home) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, part of extended programme ‘Home-Work: Connections and Transitions in London from the Seventeenth Century to the Present’, supervised with Alison Blunt (Geography) and Rebecca Jacobs (Museum of the Home), Janice (Museum of the Home).
• Mentesnot Mengesha 'The Impacts of Public Participation and Social Capital in Area-Based Urban Regeneration in the London Borough of Newham’, Queen Mary Studentship, supervised with Sarah Curtis (Geography).

Public Engagement

Public Engagement

Reaching beyond the academic world to engage with the public and a wide range of other organisations who share similar interests and passions is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job. A good deal of this work has happened through supervising collaborative AHRC and ESRC-funded PhD projects (see ‘Supervision’ tab) or through collaborating on larger research projects with museums, archives and arts organisations, including The Museum of the Home, London Museum, Museum of London Archaeology, V&A Museum of Childhood (now Young V&A), Ragged School Museum, Bank of England Archive, Spitalfields Music, Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Archives and Local History Centre. I have also worked on numerous smaller public engagement projects with my colleagues and students in partnership with a variety of local arts, heritage and community groups.

These collaborations have generated a range of non-academic outputs including public events, exhibitions, new gallery displays, podcasts, blogs, films, TV documentaries, walking tours and learning materials for schools.

I regularly give talks to school groups, local history and heritage associations and community groups about my work.

 

Media contributions

I have contributed to numerous TV (e.g. BBC1 Who do you think you are?, Inside Out) and radio (e.g. BBC Radio 4, BBC and commercial local radio) programmes as an ‘expert’ and have advised historical fiction writers, composers and musicians, TV and film production companies, and even Hollywood directors! I welcome enquires relating to my research and teaching interests and will try to help where I can.

 

Some recent public engagement projects

This on-going programme of work, mainly focused on east London, is underpinned by a number of core themes which include a desire: to make academic research publicly accessible; to build inclusive places by demonstrating the diverse histories of east London; and to enable and support our students and local communities – particularly those from minoritised backgrounds – to shape public understanding through collaboration, co-production and co-creation.

 

Untold stories: Creating a New Bengali Heritage Trail in East London (2024)
Queen Mary Summer Training Research Initiative to Support Diversity and Equality (STRIDE), £4,000, with Mehak Raghuwanshi (student researcher), Dr Ansar Ahmed Ullah and Julie Begum (Swadhinata Trust) and Carla Mitchell and Eleni Parousi (Four Corners Gallery).

Using archival and oral history research Mahak Raghuwanshi (a Queen Mary History and English student) has created a new heritage walking tour of Bangladeshi east London centred on the Shadwell and Canon Street Road areas. Available free via the izi.TRAVEL app (IoS and Android).

 

Dr Barnardo’s East London: Creating a Walking Tour with the Ragged School Museum (2024) Queen Mary Humanities and Social Sciences, Student Bursary Scheme, £1,000, with Inayah Uddin (student researcher), Prof Tim Brown and Dr Romy Nuttall (Ragged School Museum)

This new audio walking tour produced for the Ragged School Museum exploring the life and work of east London philanthropist Dr Thomas Barnardo, was researched and written by Queen Mary Geography Student Inayah Uddin. Available free via the izi.TRAVEL app (IoS and Android).

 

Child Migrant Voices in Modern Britain (2024)
Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement Large Grant, £10,000) with Dr Eithne Nightingale and Mitch Harris (Film maker)

In conjunction with the publication of Eithne Nightingale’s book Child Migrant Voices in Modern Britain (Bloomsbury, 2024) in this project we staged a series of public panel events and film screenings – in London, Surrey, Cambridge, and Scotland – drawing attention to the experiences of child migrants. We also redesigned and relaunched the Child Migrant Stories website and worked with the Migration Museum to revamp associated learning resources for schools.

 

Designing Tower Hamlets’ Green Grid: how gender inclusive design can reshape urban green spaces (2024)
Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement Large Grant, £10,000) with Professor Alison Blunt, Dr Elsa Noterman and Jennie Savage and Anna Gibbs (London Borough of Tower Hamlets)

Working with colleagues in the planning and public realm teams at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, this project worked with a team 20 community researchers – young women and non-binary people from diverse backgrounds – to understand their experiences of using green and blue public spaces in the borough. Data generated by a walking app and recorded by the researchers in ‘Walking Journals’ is being used to inform a new gender-inclusive design guide.

 

Home is… (2023)
Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement Large Grant, £10,000) with Professor Alison Blunt, Teresa Hare Duke (Freelance Creative Practitioner), Minnie Perry (Praxis).

Working with young refugees and asylum seeks who are part of the Brighter Futures collective at Praxis (an east London charity that works with migrants and refugees), this project used creative methods (including poetry and installation art) to develop a housing manifesto for young migrants living in temporary accommodation. The manifesto was launched to and audience of charities, researchers and policy makers

 

Uncovering local and global histories of Holy Trinity Bow (2023)
Queen Mary Humanities and Social Sciences, Student Bursary Scheme, £1,000, with Cian Hodge (student researcher) Dr Ed Legon, Professor Nadia Valman and with Julian McIntosh (The HAC Bow)

History Student Cian Hodge led a collaborative project researching the community associated with the noted nineteenth-century Anglican church, Holy Trinity Bow, focusing especially on those memorialised in the church and its burial ground. The research casts light on a thriving middle-class neighbourhood and some of the global lives of those associated with the church, spanning China to the ‘East Indies’. Cian produced publication Holy Trinity Bow Church in the Nineteenth Century: A Hub for Mile End’s New Middle Class and Established Elite. The work supports The Heritage and Arts Centre at Holy Trinity Bow and Epainos Ministries in their bid to revive the building as a heritage and arts space.

 

Peopling St Anne’s: a Church and its Community in East London since the Eighteenth Century (2022-23)
Queen Mary Humanities and Social Sciences, Student Bursary Scheme, £1,000, with Livonia Ayugi-Okello (student researcher), Dr Ed Legon and Philip Reddaway (Care for St Anne’s)

English MA student Livonia Ayugi-Okello led our project researching historical figures associated with the famous Hawksmoor church, St Anne Limehouse. Focusing particularly on those buried in the vaults in the church’s crypt, this included figures spanning the eighteenth to the twentieth century and included sailors and merchants – including those who made money from imperial trade and enslaved people – as well as noted marine engineers, brewers, nineteenth-century philanthropists and writers. A small exhibition from the project ‘Limehouse Lives: Tales from our Church’ can be viewed at St Anne’s. The research also contributed to Care for St Anne’s successful bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a major restoration project.

 

Rediscovering the Bow Heritage Trail (2022-23)
Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement Large Grant, £10,000 (and other funding awarded to the Roman Road Trust) with Simran Bance, Sarah Bayer and Daniel Cesarani (student researchers), Dr Justine Kenyon, Rosie Vincent (Roman Road Trust).

Working with local community organisation and social enterprise the Roman Road Trust, this project sought to revitalise a popular local heritage trail, by creating a dedicated website for the trail and adding new stops on the. A team of student researchers – Simon, Sarah and Daniel – audited and conducted new research on existing sites on the trail. Working with the Cultural Assembly, we also engaged with a wide range of local people to get ideas for new sites for the trail. Some of the fresh stops include Bow Gurdwara (once a synagogue and before that a chapel), The Saveloy Factory on Roman Road, the site of Rock Against Racism in Victoria Park, and Rhythm Division – the Bow Café where Grime Music was born.