Biography

Dr Alistair Robinson is the Academic Director, Centre for Apprenticeships and oversees the design and delivery of NU London’s degree apprenticeships in the fields of AI and Data Science, Digital Technologies, Project Management, and Biosciences. He is the academic lead for apprenticeships at the university and has a strong interest in online education, educational technologies, and work-based learning.

Alistair is also an Associate Professor in English at the University. He has degrees in English Literature from the University of Cambridge (MA), the University of Edinburgh (MScRes), and University College London (PhD). He is the author of Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-century Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).

He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Qualifications

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Research

Alistair’s research primarily focuses on British culture in the long nineteenth century. His interests representations of poverty, mobility, and vagrancy; nineteenth-century street culture; London past and present; and British popular culture.

Books

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

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

Journal articles and book chapters

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

‘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.

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.