Dr Alastair Owens

Dr Alastair Owens
Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies

School of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Phone: 020 7882 5401
Fax: 020 7882 7479
Email: a.j.owens@qmul.ac.uk

Other Positions
Honorary Editor, RGS-IBG Historical Geography Research Group Monograph Series
Editorial Board Member, Journal of Victorian Culture (2011–)
Review Editor and Editorial Board Member, The London Journal (2003–2010)
Adjunct Professor, University of California London Programme (2002–)
Steering Group Member, Histories of Home Specialist Subject Network (2008–)
Steering Group Member, Centre for Studies of Home (2011–)
Member Centre for Management and Organisational History (2011–)
Gender and Well-Being, COST-funded EU network, Core Group Member (2006–2009)
Chief Examiner, University of London International Programmes (2009–)


Teaching
GEG4106 Reinventing Britain (including the Durham Field Course), Convenor
GEG6001 Readings in Geography (Victorian London focus), Contributor
GEG6117 Victorian London: Economy, Society and Culture, Convenor
GEG7102 Art, Performance and the City, Contributor
GEG7106 Culture, Space and Power, Contributor
GEG7120 Geographical Thought and Practice, Contributor


Programme Convenor
MA London Studies 

University of California London Programme
ULF GEOG 10 London: Society and Space

Winner of the Drapers’ Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2003

Research interests:

Research areas:
Historical geographies of wealth, welfare and well-being in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; gender and property ownership; material culture and everyday life in Victorian cities; historical geographies of home and family.

I welcome enquiries from potential research students interested in these topics or related issues.


My work intersects with the School of Geography’s Economy, Development and Social Justice and Culture, Space and Power research themes. Various elements also sit within our City Centre and the Queen Mary-Geffrye Museum Centre for Studies of Home, which I recently co-founded with Professor Alison Blunt.

 

Research Interests

I am an historical geographer who works on the history of families, wealth and investment, and material culture and everyday domestic life since the nineteenth century. I am interested in the way that the ownership of property and the possession of material goods form a basis of social power and are intrinsic to the creation of social identities and relationships. A key concern is to understand the ‘everyday’ uses and meanings of property and possessions within the context of families and households. However, my work also explores how these ‘local’ arenas of everyday life were increasingly bound into wider regional, national and global spheres of exchange.

My research is interdisciplinary and collaborative. In recent projects I have worked with historians, economists, archaeologists, and finance and management experts. I have also enjoyed productive collaborations with a number of museums including: the Museum of London (AHRC funded), the Geffrye Museum (ERSC funded CASE doctoral award) and the V&A Museum of Childhood (AHRC funded collaborative doctoral award). These collaborations have incorporated a range of initiatives which have a wider public benefit including museum exhibitions, popular publications, the production of learning materials for schools, presentations to professional and popular audiences, podcasts and work with television.

Some current and recent projects include:

Inheritance, families and the market in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain Funded by the Philomathia Foundation and the Isaac Newton Trust
This project with Martin Daunton (University of Cambridge) and David Green (King’s College London) 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 ‘welfare’ 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.

Common wealth? Wealth-holding and investment in Britain and its settler colonies, 1850–1930 Funded by the British Academy and Association of Commonwealth Universities
The project examines the ownership and transmission of wealth in Britain and several of its settler colonies between c.1850 and 1914. Working with colleagues in Australia (Martin Shanahan, University of South Australia), New Zealand (Jim McAloon, Victoria University of Wellington) Canada (Livio di Matteo, Lakehead University) and Britain (David Green, King’s College London), the research explores the significance of the financial opportunities, political structures and institutional mechanisms provided by the British empire in shaping the accumulation of wealth in different territories.

Living with the past at home: domestic prehabitation and inheritance Funded by the AHRC
This collaborative project with my colleagues here at Queen Mary – Catherine Nash (lead), Caron Lipman and Alison Blunt –  will focus on the meanings, knowledges, practices and material dimensions of living with the past at home. It considers the significance of people's awareness of previous inhabitants, or that deemed to be inherited from them, in framing domestic belonging, ownership, and aesthetic expression in the home, and the forms of historical knowledge and historical practice that are prompted, informed by and result from this awareness. It will involve collaboration with the Geffrye Museum and it outputs will include an exhibition in the Museum.

Women investors in England and Wales, 1870–1930 Funded by the ESRC
This major project with David Green (King’s College London), Josephine Maltby (University of York) and Janette Rutterford (Open University) explored how individuals responded to the expansion of financial markets and new opportunities for investment in Britain and its empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were two main strands to the study: the first involved the use of death duty records to analyse the composition of personal wealth portfolios; the second entailed a large scale study of shareholdings to examine the range and nature of personal investment practices. As the title of the project suggests, a key concern was with gender and the research adds important new evidence of women’s growing economic agency in an era of wider social and political change. For more information, see the project website.

Living in Victorian London: material culture and every day domestic life in the nineteenth-century metropolis Funded by the AHRC
Undertaken in collaboration with Nigel Jeffries and Rupert Featherby at Museum of London Archaeology, this project sought to develop new approaches to studying everyday domestic life in nineteenth-century London by examining three similarly dated archaeological sites from the metropolis, located in the East End (Limehouse Causeway) the West End (New Palace Yard, Westminster), and in south London (Sydenham Brewery). Our agenda, inspired by the field of historical archaeology, was to pilot, evaluate and develop the ‘ethnographies of place’ methodology – formulated by historians and historical archaeologists working on nineteenth-century, urban working-class households in Australia and North America – in order to provide a ‘material history’ of life in Victorian London. Much recent academic work on nineteenth-century cities – and especially on Victorian London – has focused on the way that urban life was represented, such as in art, literature and social investigation. Paralleling wider intellectual developments, this project shifted attention away from the study of discourse to re-examine some of the material dimensions to urban life. Placing archaeological artefacts at the centre of our analyses opens up fresh questions about the nature of life in one of the most dramatic and powerful cities in the world. For more information, see the project website.

Evaluation of Palliative care services in the UK Funded by Big Lottery Fund and Luton Health Action zone
Earlier in my career, the necessity of generating research income through undertaking contract research enabled me to develop a further distinct area of interest and expertise in relation to inequalities in the provision of end of life care in the UK. A key concern was to explore how the ‘mixed economy’ of service provision that characterises palliative care in the UK can meet the needs of minority ethnic patients and I have carried out collaborative research looking at the delivery of palliative care services to South Asian people in Luton. I was also involved in a collaborative evaluation project of the Big Lottery Fund sponsored palliative care services in the UK (the grant ended in 2007). I am no longer actively researching in this area.

 

Research Students
Mary Guyatt Children, Home and Empire, 1870–1950 (2010–, AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, part of extended programme ‘The Child and the World: Empire, Diaspora and Global Citizenship’ with V&A Museum of Childhood)
Dr Lesley Hoskins Reading the Inventory: Household Goods, Domestic Cultures and Difference in England and Wales, 1841–1881 (PhD awarded 2011, ESRC 1+3 CASE Studentship with Geffrye Museum)


Research Assistants
Dr Claire Swan Women investors in England and Wales, 1870–1930 (2006–2007 ESRC funded)
Dr Karen Wehner Living in Victorian London: material histories of everyday life in the nineteenth-century metropolis (2007–2008, AHRC funded)
Eoin Dunn Reconstructing wealth portfolios in England and Wales, 1853–1870 (2010)

Publications:

Historical Research

  • 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., 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.
  • 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. 308 pp.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Owens, A. (2008) ‘Una inverió oculta? Dones i empresa a Anglaterra, 1750–1900’, Recerques: Historia, economía y cultura, 56, pp. 61–89. Click to download English language version: ‘A hidden investment? Women and business in England, c.1750–1900’.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Health Research

  • A. Docherty, 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Examples of research funding:

Recent Research Funding

  • Philomathia Foundation and the Isaac Newton Trust, £109,284
    Inheritance, families and the market in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. Martin Dauton (Investigator, University of Cambridge), David Green (Investigator, King’s College London) Alastair Owens (Investigator), Alison Blunt (Co-investigator). 1 July 2012–1 July 2014
  • Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) £291,336
    Living with the past at home: domestic prehabitation and inheritance. Catherine Nash (PrincipaI Investigator, Queen Mary, University of London), Alastair Owens (Co-investogator), Alison Blunt (Co-investigator) and Caron Lipman (PDRA). Award AH/I022090/1 December 2011–December 2013
  • British Academy and Association of Commonwealth Universities, £5000
    Common Wealth? Wealth-Holding and Investment in Britain and its Settler Colonies, 1850–1914. Alastair Owens (Principal Investigator, Queen Mary, University of London) and Martin Shanahan, (Co-Investigator, University of South Australia). Summer 2011.
  • Queen Mary Innovation Limited, Prospects Fund £9880
    Establishing a formal partnership between Queen Mary, University of London and the Geffrye Museum: a feasibility and scoping study Alastair Owens (Queen Mary, University of London) and Alison Blunt (Queen Mary, University of London) with the Gefrrye Museum, March–July 2010.
  • Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) c.£170,000
    The Child and The World, Empire, Diaspora and Global Citizenship. Extended Collaborative Doctoral Award Programme. Alison Blunt (Lead, Queen Mary, University of London), Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary, University of London), Alastair Owens (Queen Mary, University of London), Kiera Vaclavik (French, Queen Mary, University of London) with the V&A Museum of Childhood. October 2010–October 2015
  • Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) £61,036
    Living in Victorian London: Material Histories of Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century Metropoli.s Alastair Owens (Principal Investigator, Queen Mary, University of London) with Museum of London Archaeology Service. Award no: AH/E002285/1, July 2007–March 2008.
  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) £250,519
    Women Investors in England and Wales 1870–1930. David Green (Principal Investigator, King’s College London) Janette Rutterford (Co-Investigator, Open University), Alastair Owens (Co-investigator, Queen Mary, University of London) and Jospehine Maltby (University of York). Award no: Res-000-23-1435, December 2005–April 2008. Rated ‘Outstanding’ by all end of grant project rapporteurs.
  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) c. £50,000
    Homemaking and Material culture in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales Alastair Owens (Queen Mary, University of London) with David Dewing and Eleanor John (Geffrye Museum Trust), 1+3 CASE studentship (2005–2009).
  • BIG Lottery Fund (BLF) £149,926
    An Evaluation of the Big Lottery Fund Palliative Care Initiative
    Yvonne Carter (Principal Investigator, University of Warwick), Roland Petchey (Principal Investigator, City University), Jacky Williams (Senior Research Fellow, University of Warwick) Alastair Owens (Co-Investigator, Queen Mary, University of London) and others. Award no: FCSP/TEN/02/41 (March 2003–June 2007)