Laura MacDonald

The Featured Researcher for February 2025 was Laura MacDonald, with a project titled, ‘Archiving Agnes Owens: Asserting the Marginal Voice’

HEIs: University of Strathclyde, School of Humanities

Supervisors: Dr Eleanor Bell (University of Strathclyde), Dr Corey Gibson (University of Glasgow), Sorcha Dallas (The Alasdair Gray Archive)

My research is the first study of the complete writings of Agnes Owens (1926-2014). Owens was a late twentieth-century working-class writer who came to writing later in life. In her work, Owens gave voice to characters from the margins of working-class life, but she too was a marginal voice in the literary sphere. She was relatively neglected by critics and publishers because she was seen as a Scottish, working-class, wife and mother who happened to write, and was frequently reduced to being read through this biography. My thesis aims to help rectify this neglect through analysis of her entire oeuvre – both published and unpublished works – to show how meticulous and prolific a writer Owens truly was.

My PhD is in collaboration with The Alasdair Gray Archive, who recently established The Agnes Owens Archive as the first in their community of archives, so a key component of my research is drawing on the materials held in The AOA. At the beginning of my project, I conducted intensive archival research to gain an understanding of everything contained in the collection and the context it provides for Owens’s literary output. I also had the exciting job of reorganising the materials to make the collection as accessible as possible for visitors. See the SGSAH Blog I wrote last year for further information on that process.

The materials held in The AOA give huge insight into Owens’s biography, her influences, and her creative approach to writing, which is not available elsewhere. She is mostly considered as a West of Scotland writer, but these materials demonstrate keen engagement with global issues and literary movements. Additionally, Owens is known for her short stories and novellas, but the collection demonstrates how she experimented with other forms, including poetry, and plays for stage and radio. Archival research has also shown that some of Owens’s published novellas were once written as plays!

I am using oral history as a methodology in my research, so part of this project includes conducting oral history interviews with Owens’s family, friends, and writing collaborators. The archived materials give a great insight into Owens’s politics and personal interests, and how these informed her writing, which I have used as discussion points in these interviews. Interviewees’ idiosyncratic, personal responses are so valuable for the ways in which they contextualise Owens’s life, work, and legacy, well beyond the sparse biographical information on her which is currently available. These interviews will be archived alongside Owens’s own work in The AOA, and at the Scottish Oral History Centre, where they will be available to other researchers.

The end of my project coincides with the centenary of Owens’s birth in 2026. I will continue to work with The AOA to produce public facing events to celebrate the life and legacy of one of Scotland’s literary greats.