Professor Patricia Owens joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast.

Professor Owens grew up in London, with Irish parents who’d emigrated from Ireland during the Troubles, and the conflict in Northern Ireland provided a background to her life and especially growing up. Patricia went to a Catholic school in South London until 16, and her Catholicism was less a ‘religious’ factor than it was a cultural and political identity that shaped her time growing up in England in those days. She talks about playing football from an early age, going to Bristol for uni, the very impactful time studying abroad in the mid-90s in Chapel Hill, NC, where she first encountered political theory, and was a tour manager for the local indie rock band June in 1996.

Professor Owens went to Cambridge for her Masters, then to Aberystwyth for her PhD. She reflects on that time and the fellowships and postdocs that happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the US academy, and how those shaped what she was interested in. But there was always Arendt, a theorist whose work influenced Prof Owens’ throughout the 2000s (work that Brent connected with especially during his time at KU), and 2010s. Professor Owens talks about the Women in the History of International Thought project, a Leverhulme-funded project that has reconfigured our understanding of the history and historiography of International Thought (and IR):

She and Brent conclude with her thoughts on writing, decompressing, and more!