We are delighted to share that our Fellow & Tutor in International Relations, Professor Patricia Owens has today been confirmed as a fellow of the British Academy.  

Election to its Fellowship is the highest honour that the British Academy confers on UK residents, recognising exceptional scholarly distinction in the humanities and social sciences. 

Professor Patricia Owens

Professor Owens is a tutorial fellow at Somerville College and Professor of International Relations within the University. A leading authority in the field of International Relations, Professor Owens has published and researched extensively on the theoretical application of International Relations to contemporary events, as well as on the hitherto undocumented history of International Relations itself.

Professor Owens’ previous book, Erased, told the story of the women who created the field of International Relations and were subsequently erased from it. She was also Principal Investigator of the multi-award winning Leverhulme Research Project “Women and the History of International Thought”. Earlier this year, Professor Owens was awarded a three-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to research and write the biography of Dame Margery Perham (1895-1982), the most famous female public intellectual of her generation that most people have never heard of.

Prior to Oxford, Professor Owens held posts at fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, UC-Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and Oriel College here in Oxford.

Reflecting on her news, Professor Owens said, “I am delighted and deeply honoured to have been elected a Fellow of the British Academy. As a Somerville Fellow, it is especially meaningful to receive this recognition, in part, for work that recovers women’s intellectual work and demonstrates why history matters to how we understand International Relations, its institutions and its possibilities.”

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