Owain gained an MSc (Society and Space) and PhD in Cultural Geography at the world-leading Department of Geography, University of Bristol 1993-1997. Conducting post-doctoral research at Bristol, Exeter, the Open University and other institutions, in a series of RCUK funded projects, we has studied and written about many aspects of nature-society relations including; landscape, place  and memory;  the environmental crisis;  children’s geographies; and transformative theories of pragmatism and non-representation. He has conducted research projects on  water and society (floods, tides, coastal cultures);  trees, place and landscape; and childhood, memory, nature and place. He led a £1.5 million Art and Humanities Research Council Connected Communities project which involves eight UK universities, and numerous community partners and artists in four case study areas across the UK. This project sought to creatively explore and transform connections within and between communities, and communities and nature, in relation to water issues. Owain was appointed as the first Professor of Environmental Humanities in the UK in 2014 at Bath Spa University, and was deputy director of the Research Centre for the Environmental Humanities 2016 – 2019.  He has published/co-published over 90 scholarly articles and five books;  Art and Creativity in an Era of Ecocide: Embodiment, performance, practice (2023),  with Anna Pigott, and Ben Parry; Visual Culture in the Northern British Archipelago: Imagining Islands (2018), with Ysanne Holt and David-Martin-Jones; Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds (2017), with Michelle Bastian, Niamh Moore and Emma Roe; Geography and Memory: Identity, Place and Becoming, (2012), with Jo Garde-Hansen;  Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees, and Trees in their Place (2002), with Paul Cloke. He has successfully supervised four Environmental Humanities PhDs with art practice.