Dr Jennifer Owen

Dr Jennifer Owen is a Research Associate at the NIHR Health & Social Care Workforce Research Unit (HSCWRU), based in the Policy Institute. She joined King's and HSCWRU in April 2021. At the Unit, Jen is leading an exploratory study, funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR), of the role of professional decluttering services as part of interventions with people who hoard. She was previously part of a team examining self-neglect and hoarding among older people, also funded by the NIHR SSCR.

Prior to joining King’s, Jen was an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded Postdoctoral Fellow at Cardiff University, during which she studied a third-sector decluttering service supporting older people in South Wales. Before this, Jen worked at CASCADE on a systematic review of Shared Decision-Making Family Meetings.

In 2019, Jen completed a PhD based in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, funded by the ESRC. Her thesis examined what the growth of the self-storage industry in the UK could tell us about the changing needs of individuals and families in the face of life-course trajectories, transitions and events – including bereavement, moving home and abroad, and growing older.

With a background in social and cultural geography, Jen’s research is broadly concerned with the spatial processes and practices which construct everyday life. In particular, she is interested in the place of material objects in experiences of home, identity, mobility and the life course.

Jen is an Associate Fellow of Advanced HE, Communications Officer of the Royal Geographical Society Social and Cultural Geography Research Group, and co-founder of the UK Clutter Research Group. She has recently collaborated on the Methods for Change project, funded by ASPECT, which captures and shares the importance of social science methods for societal change.

Jennifer Owen: ORCID iD | Research Profile at King's