Professor Patricia Owens elected a Fellow of the British Academy
Congratulations to DPIR’s Professor of International Relations Patricia Owens, who has been elected a Fellow of The British Academy.
Professor Owens has been elected to the Academy in recognition of her scholarship in international relations and the history of international thought.
Election to the Academy’s Fellowship is the highest honour it confers on British-based scholars in the humanities and social sciences.
“It is especially meaningful to be recognised by a community that champions the importance of the humanities and social sciences, including the contribution that historically grounded scholarship can make to understanding the contemporary world.”
Professor Owens is currently beginning a major new research project supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. The project is an intellectual biography of Dame Margery Perham, one of the most influential British thinkers and public commentators on colonial government, decolonisation and Africa in the twentieth century. Drawing on Perham’s extensive archive, the study will examine her intellectual development, political relationships and changing responses to empire and its aftermath, while also addressing broader questions about biography, race, expertise and the formation of academic knowledge.
This research builds on Professor Owen’s recent book, Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men, which reconstructs the work of women who helped to establish the study of international relations in Britain but were subsequently written out of the discipline’s history. The book has received several major international awards.
The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Read the full list of the 92 new Fellows welcomed to the British Academy in 2026.
