Biography

Alistair Robinson is the Academic Director, Centre for Apprenticeships and an Associate Professor in English. Alistair has worked in the University’s apprenticeship provision since its infancy and now oversees the development and delivery of Degree Apprenticeship programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Qualifications

PhD in English, University College London
MScRes in English, University of Edinburgh
MA in English, University of Cambridge

Research

Alistair specialises in British nineteenth-century literature and culture. He has written extensively on the themes of poverty, mobility, class, race, and their intersections, examining them through a wide range of authors and visual artists. His most recent research projects have focused on Robert Louis Stevenson and the Scottish coast, and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon and May Day in Regency London.

Books

Co-editor with Charlotte Grant, Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration (London: Bloomsbury, 2024)

Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

‘Scotch Hornpipes and African Elephants: The May Fair in 1700’, Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration, eds Charlotte Grant and Alistair Robinson (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), pp. 173-9.

‘Casual Wards of London: Vagrants, Poor Laws and the Metropolitan Workhouse’, Navigating the Nineteenth-century Institution, ed. Carol Beardmore (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024), pp. 71-96.

‘Beachcombers: Vagrancy, Empire, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Ebb-Tide’, Review of English Studies, 70.297 (2019): 930-49.

‘Vagrant, Convict, Cannibal Chief: Abel Magwitch and the Culture of Cannibalism in Great Expectations’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 22.4 (2017): 450-64.

Book Reviews

‘Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London by Oskar Jensen’, Victorian Studies, 66.1 (2023): 145-6.
‘London: City of Cities by Phil Barker’, London Journal, 46.3 (2021): 335-6.

‘All the Tiny Moments Blazing: A Literary Guide to Suburban London by Ged Pope’, London Journal, 46.2 (2021): 215-7.

‘George Borrow’s Second Tour of Wales 1857’, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) Newsletter, 20.1 (2020): 8-9.

‘Richard Garcia, Barroco on the Rock: George Borrow and Gibraltar’, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) Newsletter, 18.1 (2018): 24-5.

‘Notebooks from the Borders: George Borrow’s Celtic Expeditions’, British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) Newsletter, 16.3 (2016): 38-41.