Allison Owens

Allison Owens
Noted subjects	British and European Literature, Linguistics
Current college	Sheffield (2020-2024)
Pronouns	she/they
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Allison Owens is a quizzer and prolific moderator from Shropshire, UK, who completed a Masters in Linguistics at Sheffield. Her first tournament was 2022 ACF Fall, and she has since performed well at British Novice 2022 and other UK mirrors. In 2024, Allison was the tournament director for the UK mirror of Planetfall and the open mirror of WaShBowl, both hosted in Sheffield.

University Career

Allison’s undergraduate degree was in Literature and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield, where she remained to complete a Masters in Linguistics in the 2023-2024 academic year. By training, Allison is a syntactician and works on voice and word order.

She joined QuizSoc Sheffield halfway through her second year at University, having attended the Pub Quiz run by Danny Lardner and Ethan Moss. Though Allison began playing QuizBowl in Spring 2022, her first tournament was not until the Autumn, ACF Fall. She played on a team with Matthew Nail, Charlotte Wright and Matthew Beckett-White. She continued to play for Sheffield in the 2022-2023 season, including British Novice 2022 and C++ in the Spring semester. She was less active in the 2023-2024 season as a player, but did participate in the UK mirrors of DMA and WaShBowl. At WaShBowl, she played again with Charlotte Wright, plus Bethany Coombes and Elizabeth McGeown, a team notable for being entirely female. As noted, she is a prolific moderator - modding at tournaments including Spring Novice 2023 and Late Winter Novice 2024. Additionally, she has written questions for British Novice, ACF Winter and WaShBowl II.

Allison was one of two Officers Without Portfolio for Sheffield Quiz Society in the 2023-2024 academic year, alongside Max Watson. As part of this role, she organised Sheffield’s first Drunk Buzzer Quiz, intended to be similar to those run at other Universities. She served as Tournament Director for the UK mirror of Planetfall in Spring 2024, the second tournament to be held in Sheffield in the 2023-2024 season. Her crowning achievement in the admin area is organising a pizza smorgasbord for the tournament moderators.