Lauren Holmes
School of Arts, Media and Creative Technologies
Maxwell Building
University of Salford
Manchester
M5 4WT
Biography
Lauren Pearl Holmes (she/her) is a scholar of Puritan preaching literatures and a fourth year PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Salford. She holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Salford and an MA in English Literature and American Studies from the University of Manchester. She specialises in exploring intersections between women’s religious writing and the activities of radical Puritan sects in the mid-seventeenth century.
Lauren is the Widening Participation (WP) Summer School Manager at the University of Salford. The WP Summer School provides promising second-year undergraduates from backgrounds that are currently underrepresented in academia with hands-on, paid experience of research during the summer break. The Summer School helps students to refine key research and interpersonal skills and build their confidence as rising scholars.
Previously, Lauren she served as an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) lead for the University of Salford's School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology (SAMCT). Her EDI lead project was a community network open to all postgraduate researcher (PGR) parents and carers. It aimed to find out if there are barriers to good working practices and feelings of belonging in PGR parents and carers. It also investigated if a community set up specifically for PGR parents and carers could promote good wellbeing.
Lauren is also a recipient of the British Association for American Studies' (BAAS) Targeted Research Panel (TRP) Award. The fund is supporting three years of research into the history, shape, and development of American Studies in the UK, as well as the discipline’s present and future in an era of higher education crisis.
Areas of Research
Lauren is particularly interested in literary representations of female spirituality and agency in the Long Reformation, as well as in challenging critical assumptions about the role of religion and rhetoric in shaping the authorship and publication practices of women in the seventeenth century. She has spoken at Harvard Divinity School on seventeenth-century poetry and sermons in manuscript and has written on the roles of antinomianism, metatheatricality, and proto-sentimentalism in the literatures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Qualifications
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Doctor of Philosophy - PhD - English Literature
2023 - 2027 -
Master of Arts - MA - English Literature and American Studies - Merit
2019 - 2021 -
Bachelor of Arts - BA (Hons) English Literature - First-Class
2016 - 2019