Professor John Holmes BA, MA, DPhil

• D.Phil. In English Literature, Oxford, 2001
• M.A. in Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, 1997
• B.A. in English Language and Literature, Oxford, 1994

I was born and grew up in London, before moving to Oxford to do my undergraduate degree, back to London for my MA, and back to Oxford, where I completed a doctorate on ‘The Victorian Sonnet Sequence and the Crisis of Belief’ in 2001. After teaching briefly for the Open University, I got a job as lecturer in English literature at the University of Reading. I taught at Reading from 2001 to 2015 before joining Birmingham as Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture.

I teach primarily nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. I currently teach on a first-year module on Theory and Practice of Criticism; second-year modules on Victorian Literature and Literature and the Environment; and a third-year module on Literature in the Age of Evolution, running from the early 1800s to the 1950s.

Literature and science from 1800 to the present; literature and the environment; literature and the visual arts; the Pre-Raphaelites; Victorian and modern poetry; poetic form, particularly the sonnet and the epic.

Find out more - our PhD English Literature  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

I work mainly on the interface between science and the arts in the period from 1800 to the present. I have written books on Darwinism and poetry and on the Pre-Raphaelites and science, and edited or co-edited collections of essays on nineteenth-century literature and science and on science in modern poetry. I have worked extensively with scientists through collaborations with the Royal Society; the natural history museums in Oxford, London, Berlin and Vienna; and research institutes including BIFoR and BISCA. My current research has two main strands, looking at the capacity of stories and storytelling to help tackle climate change and the cross-fertilisation between epic and mythic literature and evolutionary science over the last two hundred years.

I have played a leading role in establishing research communities working on literature and science over the last twenty years. I was Treasurer of the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) from 2006 to 2009, Book Reviews Editor from 2008 to 2012, and Chair from 2012 to 2015. I helped to establish links between the BSLS and other related academic societies, including the international Commission on Science and Literature (CoSciLit), the European branch of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSAeu) and the British Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE-UK). Since 2023, I have been President of CoSciLit, where I have prioritised research in literature and science beyond western Europe and North America, including supporting regional events and ensuring that our conferences are hybrid. In 2025, I led on the College of Arts and Law’s campaign in response to COP30, including writing an open letter signed by over 200 experts, activists and artists calling for the climate negotiations to use storytelling and the arts to help imagine solutions and change public opinion on climate change.

I co-edit the book series Explorations in Science and Literature for Bloomsbury and am on the editorial board of the Journal of Literature and Science. I am also an honorary associate of Oxford University Museum of Natural History, where I have co-curated arts programmes and exhibitions, and have been invited to speak about literature and science in conferences, research seminars and public across Europe and North America, as well as the UK.