Born in the U.K., Yvonne Owens was raised in the U.S. from the age of nine. She moved to San Francisco in her early 20s, and to New York City in her early 30s. After emigrating to Canada in 1986, Yvonne worked at the Fran Willis Gallery in Victoria, B.C., wrote art criticism for Monday Magazine, Artichoke, Vie Des Arts, Border Crossings, and even (briefly) for BC BookWorld. Returning to university in 1999, she is a past Research Fellow at the University College of London and Professor of Art History and Critical Studies at the Victoria College of Art in Victoria. She holds an Honours B.A. with Distinctions in History of Art from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, an M.A. in Medieval Studies with Distinction from The Centre For Medieval Studies at the University of York, U.K., and both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in History of Art from University College of London, U.K.. Dr. Owens was awarded a Marie Curie Ph.D. Fellowship in 2005 for her interdisciplinary dissertation on Renaissance portrayals of women in art and sixteenth-century Witch Hunt discourses. Her publications to date have mainly focused on representations of women and the gendering of evil "defect" in classical humanist discourses, cross-referencing these figures to historical art, natural philosophy, medicine, theology, science and literature. Her essay, "The Saturnine History of Jews and Witches," appeared in Preternature (Vol. 3, No. 1) in 2014, her book chapter, "Pollution and Desire in Hans Baldung Grien: The Abject, Erotic Spell of the Witch and Dragon" appeared in Angeliki Pollali and Berthold Hub, Eds., Images of Sex and Desire in Renaissance Art and Modern Historiography. Her essay 'The Hags, Harridans, Viragos and Crones of Hans Baldung Grien' was published as part of the 'Hans Baldung Grien: New perspectives on his work, International Conference Proceedings' (October 18-20, 2018), Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2019, and her book, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien, was published by Bloomsbury London in 2020. She also writes art and cultural criticism, exploring contemporary post-humanist discourses in art, literature and new media. She is co-Editor with Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju for an anthology of essays titled Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts, forthcoming in 2022 from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

BOOKS:

Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien, (2020)

The Journey of the Bard, Horned Owl Publishers, 1996

The Cup of Mari Anu, Horned Owl Publishers, 1995

The Witch's Book of Days (with Jessica North and Jean Kozocari), Beach Holme Press, 1993