Roger Owen (historian)

Edward Roger John Owen (born 1935) is a British historian who has written several classic works on the history of the modern Middle East. His research interests include the economic, social and political history of the Middle East, especially Egypt, from 1800 to the present, as well as the theories of imperialism, including military occupations.

Owen is currently the A.J. Meyer Professor Emeritus of Middle East History at Harvard University and was previously the director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to teaching at Harvard, he was a faculty member at Oxford University, where he served several times as the director of the St Antony’s College Middle East Centre. In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Owen frequently writes columns for the English-language versions of the Arabic newspapers Al-Hayat and Al-Ahram.

He is a member of the organization MESA.

He received the prestigious “Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies 2010” from the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) in Barcelona in July 2010.

Selected works

• The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. Harvard University Press (2012)
• Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul (2004)
• State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. Routledge, revised version (2004)
• A History of the Middle East Economies in the 20th Century, with Şevket Pamuk). I.B. Tauris (1999)
• The Middle East in the World Economy 1800-1914 (1981)
• Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820-1914 (1969)

External links

• Faculty page at Harvard University
• Roger Owen presents at Harvard Law School, March 17, 2008.
• One Hundred Years of Middle Eastern Oil. By Prof. E. Roger Owen, 2008.