2022: Professor Alastair Owens

It has been my pleasure to work with Professor Alastair Owens this last year, who has served as Vice President during my term as President. 

He takes over as President today!

He was very much involved in the GA Conference 2022, and has created the theme of 'Collaborative Geographies' for 2023.

More on that later in this post.

I hadn't met Alastair before he was named as the next VP, and he kindly came up to Ely in a gap in lockdown to have a wander and a chat about what the role might involve, and my own personal involvement with the Geographical Association. We have worked well together and he has been very supportive. He also had an important job to do at the GA Conference in April 2022, and introduced me at my Presidential Lecture amongst other things.

I sent Alastair the questions that I had given to all other Presidents and used them to create the post below. I'm grateful to Alastair for the lovely level of detail that he included here:

On his birth:

I was born in a cottage maternity hospital in a small town called Heswall on the Wirral, Cheshire in 1971. My father was a Church of England curate and we lived in village called Pensby; my mother had given up work as a Biology Teacher to start a family (I am the eldest of four, all born between 1971 and 1977).

On his childhood and school memories:

In 1974, aged three, I moved to a small town called Alsager, near Crewe, in south Cheshire. That was a happy time and I joined St Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Primary School for most of my primary education. It was a memorable school, newly-built and very 1970s with an open plan layout with curtained bays at the sides for ‘floor time’ activity and discussions. Mine and my siblings’ attendance caused a minor local stir as my dad was the vicar of an Anglican church and we attended a Catholic School. It was great though, as we were always given sweets on saints’ days! 

Here's Alastair in 1974 showing his fashion sense in a rather fine tank top.

He said:

I don’t have many geography memories from that time, but there was a short-lived acting career. I played Mowgli in a production of the Jungle Book in 1981 – I am the skinny one wearing a sheepskin rug) – an episode for decolonising, I think – and Michael in Mary Poppins. I think it was my ability to sing in tune that got me these roles!

At that point Alsager was being developed as a commuter town, but still felt quite rural and I enjoyed a ‘free-range’ child, pedalling around on a basic but trusty Raleigh bike (rather uncool compared to most of my friends’ ‘Choppers’), riding through fields and down disused railways with my buddies. I wanted to be a farmer (my best friend had a farm and collecting eggs from the henhouse was a favourite highlight when visiting) or a train driver, but had no inklings about becoming a Professor of Geography at the point.

On his parents and their career and family movements, plus links with politics and 1980s Britain:

My parents were quite political, my dad in particular, and in the 70s he occasionally got labelled ‘the Commie Vicar’; they were both members of CND. In fact it was politics that moved him to a new job in a place called Brinnington in Stockport, near Manchester. The move took place in 1983, just before I went to secondary school. The majority of Brinnington was comprised of a large council estate, constructed in the 1960s. It was (and remains) pretty deprived and there were many associated problems such as ill health, low educational attainment, crime and substance misuse. Of course, it was also a place of great warmth and joy, generosity, talent and care and I suppose that’s where I became very aware of the significance of place, including of the ways that certain places get pathologized and demonised.

We lived in a vicarage (one of the few detached homes in the neighbourhood) right in the middle of Brinnington, next to the church, across from a chippy and between an old people’s home and the Labour Club. This was formative. 

Many people come to visit vicarages, looking for food, shelter, money and protection. 

We were all quite adept as teenagers at handling callers, making cups of tea and sandwiches, often for regulars who you would get to know. But others visits were troubling: a night when I was in on my own, a man forced his way in to headbutt his girlfriend, who I had let in for protection; another man turned up on the doorstep with a stab wound; a trans person came exasperated by continuous taunting and discrimination; and a plastic carrier bag full of fivers and tenners was once handed in (‘don’t ask me any questions') for safe keeping.

While living in Brinnington, my father’s work became part of a politicised religious response to the ‘crisis’ of the British inner city in the 1980s. Following in the trail blazed by publications like Faith in the City (1985) and identifying with a Christian Socialist tradition, he used the church buildings to offer a range of community-centred services, from providing access to cheap food and furniture (donated from wealthier parts of Cheshire and South Manchester), to advice and counselling services, drugs advice and even a needle exchange (it was also moment of concern because of the AIDS pandemic). 

I remember this vividly and becoming a bit of an adjunct to parish life. 

One popular weekly event was prize bingo (mainly prizes of groceries bought from Sainsbury’s), and sometimes I used to have the job of placing the balls on the number tray after the caller (usually my mother) had read them out. 

This experience (living as the son of a clergyman in Brinnington not the bingo balls) became the inspiration for a major research project that I am currently completing and on the back of which I am currently writing a book (with Historian David Geiringer), exploring the response of the Church of England to the crisis of the inner city in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Alastair told me about his secondary school experiences and early interest in geography:

This life in Brinnington contrasted sharply with my schooling. 

One of the problems when moving to Brinnington was finding a place in a secondary school. It went against my parents’ principles at the time but I ended up going to a private school, Stockport Grammar School, supported by a government funded ‘assisted place’ (a scheme that funded children from low-income families to go to a private school). 

Stockport Grammar provided a wonderful education and many opportunities, offering privileges that contrasted sharply with the lives of people in Brinnington.

Through school I became increasingly interested in History and Geography, inspired by some very good teachers. 

A history teacher – Nicholas Henshall – was exceptional. He encouraged us to read academic texts and get enthused by historiographical argument and debate and instilled rigorous skills of analysis and essay writing techniques (which I use with my own students). 

The Geographers at Stockport Grammar were an eccentric and likeable bunch teaching different specialisms at A Level: the EEC with Mr Martin; Africa with Miss Backhouse; methods and techniques with Mr Barr (a north-American trained spatial scientist and product of the ‘quantitative revolution’); and physical geography with head of department, Mr Durnall (aka ‘the Colonel’), who always wore a white coat!

On his university studies, he faced some difficult decisions:

Undecided whether to study Geography or History, in the end I decided to apply for Geography courses at university. 

I got an offer from Cambridge but didn’t get my grades and wound up at my insurance choice, King’s College London. 

This of course has strong links with many former GA Presidents including Laurence Dudley Stamp.

I moved to London in 1990 and have been there ever since. 

King’s was exciting – buzzing, central, right at the heart of what was going on politically and economically. I persuaded them to let switch from BA Geography to BA Geography and History and made the most of a degree that allowed me to study modules across the University of London. 

At King’s I met historical Geographer David Green – at one time a key supporter of the GA and organiser of the annual conference. 

He was my tutor and dissertation supervisor and we’ve been good friends and collaborators ever since.

He’s the reason I ended up an academic Geographer, a model mentor and support, who I have learnt a great deal from. I was taught by several other inspiring geographers in London – Latin Americanist Linda Newson, Political Geographer Keith Hoggart, Cultural Geographer Peter Jackson, and Historical Geographer Richard Dennis. 

But London itself was as much a (historical)-geographical education as the degree course. 

I started out in student digs in Denmark Hill, before spending a year in a grotty student house in Peckham. In the final year, thanks to the early 1990s housing crisis, we lived in a cheap but (fairly) luxury flat on the Thames on the Isle of Dogs. My bedroom overlooked the river.

Alastair pictured in 1993 as a student. I had very similar glasses at the time.

Alastair moved on to telling me about his work and career to date:

I graduated in 1993 fairly convinced that I wanted to do a PhD, but failed to win funding to start straight away. Over the next year I had two jobs: working for a publishing company producing an encyclopaedia with ‘experts’ from the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, and working as a Research Assistant for David Green at King’s on a project looking at the geography of wealth and inequality in Victorian London.

Victorian London is still a major interest and the focus of the specialist third year course I teach in my current job.

This set the scene for a PhD that I started in 1994 at what was then Queen Mary and Westfield College, over in East London. 

There I was supervised by Geographers Humphrey Southall and Miles Ogborn and undertook research on families, wealth and inheritance in the nineteenth century. 

The PhD was funded through a Teaching Assistant position in the Department of Geography at Queen Mary where I ran tutorial and seminars for undergraduate students and taught on fieldtrips. It was wonderful ‘on the job’ training and Queen Mary offered a warm and supportive working environment, with many inspiring colleagues (and friends of the GA) such as Ray Hall and Roger Lee.

Soon after starting at Queen Mary, in 1995 I moved to Hackney and have lived within a few hundred yards of the place I first rented ever since. 

Hackney is, in my view, the best place on the planet and an education in itself. 

Alastair's Twitter account is @AlastairHackney which reflects this love of the place.

From singing in a community choir to having various voluntary and community roles, I feel deeply embedded in the place. The richness and diversity of experience in Hackney is a constant geographical inspiration. It is also grounding; intellectual flights of fancy only go so far in a place as diverse, complex and unequal as Hackney; it demands a more immediate response.

I was lucky enough to get a job as soon as my PhD funding came to an end in 1998 (I hadn’t actually finished the thesis) and moved to what was then the University of Luton as a Lecturer in Human Geography. It was a small Department and there were only really two of us who taught human geography, so I quickly developed a wide-ranging teaching portfolio. Aside from the longish commute, it was for most of the time a happy institution in which to begin a career and I found Luton as a place very interesting – it felt to me like a bit of the North in the South East! With the different priorities of a ‘new’ university I got diverted from some of my core historical research interests to undertake collaborative projects with university colleagues working in the area of local healthcare provision. 

A particularly successful qualitative research project explored the palliative care needs of South Asian people living in Luton, off the back of which we published a number of articles and at that point I nearly switched my academic focus to work in health and social care services research. 

This was in part triggered by the decision to close the department I was working in (the Department of Environment, Geography and Geology) due to low student recruitment; redundancy or a lectureship in health and social care were my options. It was a painful time for many of my colleagues who had been at Luton for many years. 

In the end I took the former option as I was offered a temporary job back at Queen Mary.

Queen Mary, like Hackney is an important place for Alastair:

I returned to Queen Mary in 2001 and have been there ever since. 

In the early years – as has become the norm in HE – I got by on a number of short-term contracts filling temporary positions, but applied for and got a permanent post in Human Geography in 2005. 

Queen Mary has been a wonderful place to develop a career. Deeply rooted in its East London location, but global in its outlook and high in academic aspirations, it has often felt a privilege to be part of its diverse community. 

It has a very open intellectual culture where I have been free to work across disciplines and with people and organisations outside of the university. 

I’ve worked alongside and with many remarkable geographers at Queen Mary – Alison Blunt, Kavita Datta, Jon May, Miles Ogborn, Catherine Nash, Kate Amis, Marta Timoncini (to name just a few) – but perhaps the thing that has really made my career has been the many collaborations that I have been able to sustain outside of the university, especially with museum, heritage and community organisations. 

Centred around historical research interests spanning the period from the 1800 to the present, and often concerned with the historical geographies of London, these collaborations have included work with: Museum of London Archaeology, the Bank of England, the V&A Museum of Childhood, Spitalfields Music and many more and brought many wonderful people to work with me as PhD students. 

A particularly rewarding and long-lasting series of collaborations – usually with my colleague Alison Blunt – has been with the Museum of the Home (in Shoreditch), where, often following Alison’s discipline-leading interest in ‘geographies of home’, we have worked together to explore aspects of the domestic life and experience in the past and the present (including our current project with geographers Georgina Endfield and Kathy Burrell at the University of Liverpool on COVID-19 and experiences of domestic life).

So, what is Alastair's current role?

I was made Professor of Historical Geography at Queen Mary in 2016 and was in that role and Head of the School of Geography at Queen Mary when I became Vice President of the GA. 

I have since finished my term as Head of School, but am very pleased to be bringing an East London perspective to the GA, not least as we’ve had an active local branch of the GA supported by the Queen Mary and the East London Geography Hub (organised by Vice President elect Denise Freeman).

Alastair is also a keen runner. Here he is taking part in the 2022 Hackney Half Marathon.

What is Alastair's Presidential theme?

My theme is ‘Collaborative Geographies’. 

I chose it for a number of reasons. 

First (and rather indulgently), my own career has often been about collaboration – with my colleagues, with my students and with people and organisations outside of my university – it remains one of the most enjoyable aspects of what I do. 

Second, I think geographers are good collaborators. 

We are used to working together and can see the world from multiple perspectives. 

Collaborating is at the heart of geographical learning – in classrooms and in the field. But I also think collaboration is important as method and as a political strategy. In some political quarters there is a belief that collaboration, co-operation and working together with and across our differences is a bad thing. I profoundly disagree. There are many challenges within and beyond geography where I think collaboration – with its pleasures but also its challenges, its requirement to listen, adapt and compromise – is key to achieving better geographical education, a better professional geographical community, and a better world. 

I hope this can be explored in my presidential year and, as a framework, put to good use in relation to some of our current preoccupations and challenges, such as efforts to decolonise and make more inclusive geographical understanding, education and (professional) practice.

And finally, Alastair explained what the GA means to him:

I have long been inspired by the GA and have worked with geographical educators outside of universities since the very start of my own career as a Geographer. 

We should be working together and learning from one another, across, specialisms, areas of expertise and phases, I think. 

I began to work more with the GA after I sat on the A Level Content Advisory Board (back in 2014), where along with a team of academics, teachers and geography professionals, we devised the content for the A Level qualification that has been taught since 2016. 

My particular area of contribution related to the ‘Changing Places’ theme (loved and loathed in equal measure, I hear) - I love it - and I have contributed to various professional development programmes (associated with the GA and with organisations beyond the GA) relating to that theme ever since. 

I also co-wrote a textbook for the GA’s Top Spec series with Simon Oakes and Emma Rawlings-Smith entitled Changing Places. 

Since becoming Vice President, I have been involved in a range of other things, including the Diversity and Inclusion Group.

Best of luck to Alastair for his Presidential year ahead.

All images copyright Alastair Owens.