Roger Owen

Emeritus Fellow Edward Roger John Owen died on 22 December 2018 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Roger Owen joined St Antony’s as a doctoral student in Social Studies in 1960 and completed his thesis, “Cotton production and the development of the economy in nineteenth century Egypt, 1821-1914,” under the supervision of P.D. Henderson in 1965.

Recruited by Middle East Centre Director Albert Hourani, Owen was appointed Lecturer in the Recent Economic History of the Middle East in 1964 and became a University Lecturer and Faculty Fellow in 1969.  He was made Emeritus Fellow in 1993 when he resigned his Oxford post to take up the A.J. Meyer Professorship in Middle East History at Harvard.  Through his numerous books, his doctoral supervision and teaching Professor Owen was universally recognized as one of the leading international scholars of the modern Middle East.