Dr Owain Wright

Lecturer in 19th/20th-Century European and British History

Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts

Contact Details

email: o.wright@worc.ac.uk

tel: 01905 85 5481

Teaching & Research

Owain Wright, BA Hons (Lancaster 1999), PhD (Lancaster 2005), is a political and cultural historian specialising in modern Italian and British history, and in relations between Great Britain and Italy in particular. He held a number of teaching posts at Lancaster University (2000-2007) and a research post at Kingston University (2007-2009) before being appointed at the University of Worcester in 2009.

Owain teaches extremely widely within the fields of modern European and British history, while his research is concerned mainly with the involvement of Great Britain in the Unification of Italy. He has published several journal articles and conference papers on British perspectives on Italy and British interactions with the newly-unified Italian state. He is currently working on his first book, A Special Relationship? Great Britain and Unified Italy, 1861-70, while also planning his second, Emissary of Victorian Liberalism: Sir Henry Elliot's Diplomacy in Italy, Greece and the Ottoman Empire. In the future he intends to develop his research interest in the use of propaganda in Fascist Italy by writing a book for students on that topic, as well as working to broaden the English-speaking world's understanding of the political and social history of the island of Sardinia.

Professional Bodies

Owain is a member of ASMI (the Association for the Study of Modern Italy)

Publications

Journal articles:

‘British Foreign Policy and the Italian Occupation of Rome, 1870’ International History Review Vol. 34 No. 1 (2012), pp. 161-176.

‘Police “Outrages” against British Residents and Travellers in Liberal Italy, 1867-77’, Crime, History and Societies Vol. 14 No. 1 (2010), pp. 51-72.

‘British Representatives and the Surveillance of Italian affairs, 1860-70’, The Historical Journal Vol. 51 No. 3 (2008), pp. 669-87.

‘Sea and Sardinia: Pax Britannica versus Vendetta in the New Italy (1870)’, European History Quarterly Vol. 37 No. 3 (2007), pp. 398-416.

Papers in edited volumes of conference proceedings:

‘Orientalising Italy: The British and Italian Political Culture’, in Locating Italy: East and West in British-Italian Transactions, ed. Kirsten Sandrock and Owain Wright (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, forthcoming 2012).

‘Between Italy and Africa: British Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Sardinia’, in Travels and Translations, ed. Stefano Villani and Alison Yarrington (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, in press).

‘The “Pleasantest Post” in the Service? Contrasting British diplomatic and consular experiences in Early Liberal Italy’, in Exiles, Émigrés and Intermediaries: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, ed. Barbara Schaff (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2010), pp. 141-57.

Book reviews:

Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy by Axel Körner, Modern Italy (forthcoming 2012).

Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity by Iain Chambers, European History Quarterly Vol. 40 No. 2 (2010), pp. 308-9.

Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe by Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros & Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (eds), Democratization Vol. 15 No. 1 (2008), pp. 201-2.

Italy’s Social Revolution: Charity and Welfare in Italy from Liberalism to Fascism by Maria Sophia Quine, Social History Society Bulletin Vol. 28 No. 1 (2003), pp. 67-9.

British Envoys to Germany, 1816-1866, Volume I: 1816-29, ed. Sabine Freitag & Peter Wende, European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 2 (2003), pp. 269-72.

Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin by Karina Urbach, European History Quarterly Vol. 33 No. 1, (2003), pp. 136-7.

The Politics of Italian National Identity: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective by Gino Bedani & Bruce Haddock, Social History Society Bulletin Vol. 26 No. 2 (2001), pp. 38-9.

Owain has also published a number of online book reviews for www.history-compass.com

External Responsibilities