Articles by jholmes

Forest Ecology in Fantasy Fiction: Mobilising the Imaginative Resources of Fantasy Fiction for Living with Forests.

The University of Birmingham is offering a funded PhD studentship on forest ecology in fantasy fiction under the Forest Edge PhD programme funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The project will involve collaboration between the schools of English, Drama and Creative Studies (EDACS) and Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES), the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) and Ruskin Land. The PhD will be jointly supervised by Prof John Holmes (EDACS), Prof Jon Sadler (GEES) and Dr Will Tattersdill (EDACS), with support from John Iles (Ruskin Land). 

For more information about the project, click below:

Forest Edge PhD guidance notes

The deadline for applications is 10 February 2020. Applicants should have experience of studying literature at university level. Beyond this, we welcome candidates with diverse educational and disciplinary backgrounds and professional expertise for this interdisciplinary PhD. For full details on funding and to begin an application, please click on the link below:

https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/forest-ecology-in-fantasy-fiction-mobilising-the-imaginative-resources-of-fantasy-fiction-for-living-with-forests/?p117723

If you would like to discuss this project further before applying, please email John Holmes (j.holmes.1@bham.ac.uk) in the first instance.

A special issue of Romanticism on the Net, edited by Martin Priestman and Louise Lee, has just been published on 'The Two Darwins'. To read the introduction and the articles, click here. Because of a hiatus in publication, the issue has been backdated to 2016 and published under the journal's then title Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. 

At 7.00 pm on Sunday 7th July in the Levi Fox Hall Edward’s Boys will give their first performance of Wit and Science by John Redford prior to touring Oxford, London and Genoa, Italy where they will perform at the invitation of the Société Internationale pour l’étude du Théâtre Médiéval.

Redford, composer, organist and choirmaster of St Paul’s Cathedral, seems to have written the play around 1540. It exists in one manuscript in the British Library. Part comic allegory and part satire on education, and including four songs, Wit and Science is important for several reasons: it spawned imitations and sequels; it is a rare example of an English ‘school play’; and it tells us something about how a Tudor schoolmaster understood his educational project. 

Performances

Sunday 7th July, 7.00pm – Levi Fox Hall CV37 6BE
Tickets: £10; Concessions: £5

Monday 8th July, 6.00pm – The Chapel. New College, Oxford OX1 3BN
Tickets: £10; Concessions: £5

Tuesday 9th July, 7.00pm – the Priory Church of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 4JJ
Tickets: £12; Concessions: £6

Tickets for performances may be purchased by means of the online Box Office https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/kes

Friday 12th July, 7.00pm for the Société Internationale pour l’étude du Théâtre Médiéval at the Palazzo Ducale di Genova, Italy

Oxford University’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums, including the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford Botanic Garden and the History of Science Museum have been awarded 11 PhD studentships through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) programme. For more information, or if you are interested in proposing a collaborative doctoral project, click here.

The final series of Oxford's excellent Science, Culture and Medicine seminars is coming up this term. For details of the talks, click below.