Dr Alistair Robinson

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

Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration, ed. by Charlotte Grant and Alistair Robinson (Bloomsbury, 2024)

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

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Alistair Robinson, ‘Spring, Streets, and Chimney Sweeps: May Day in Regency London and Benjamin Robert Haydon’s Punch (1829)’, Studies in Romanticism 64.1 (2025): 27-51

Charlotte Grant, Sam Waterman, Tomas Elliot, Flora Lisica, Peter Maber, Jacob McGuinn, Natasha Periyan, Leighan Renaud, and Alistair Robinson, ‘Teaching London’s Past Today: An Experiential Approach to a Global City’, London Journal 50.1 (2025): 34-53

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

Charlotte Grant and Alistair Robinson, ‘Introduction’, Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration, ed. by Charlotte Grant and Alistair Robinson (Bloomsbury, 2024), pp. 1-16

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

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

Alistair Robinson, ‘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

Alistair Robinson, ‘Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London by Oskar Jensen’, Victorian Studies, 66.1 (2023): 145-6.

Alistair Robinson, ‘London: City of Cities by Phil Barker’, London Journal, 46.3(2021): 335-6.

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

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

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

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