A British Academy Fellow recognised as a leading scholar on post-Holocaust poetry has joined the University of Lincoln’s College of Arts, as part of a major investment in the humanities.
Professor Antony Rowland was granted a coveted British Academy Fellowship in 2012, and is now one of an elite group of scholars elected for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The British Academy elects to its Fellowship scholars who have achieved academic distinction, which is reflected in their scholarly research activity and publication.
Professor Rowland was recognised for his pioneering research which considers Holocaust poetry, and how poetry more widely can be understood as a form of testimony. His investigations focus on the work of poets including Primo Levi, Wilfred Owen and the ‘Oasis’ poets of World War Two, and highlight that, once testimony is prised away from a historico-juridicial context, other forms of writing – such as poetry – can be fruitfully analysed as testimony.
His findings will be detailed in a new book, entitled Poetry as Testimony, soon to be published by Routledge. This publication follows the success of his most recent title, Holocaust Poetry, which represents the first ever critical study of post-Holocaust poetry in the UK.
Professor Rowland is also a Fellow of the English Association, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and a former Executive Board Member for the European Periodicals Network. He joins the University of Lincoln’s School of Humanities from the University of Salford, where he held the positions of Chair and Professor of Modern Literature, Head of English and Senior Lecturer.
On his appointment as Professor of Contemporary English Literature at the University of Lincoln, Professor Rowland said: “I am delighted to be joining a university that is actively investing in the arts and humanities. The Vice Chancellor and senior management team have also made some excellent strategic decisions in the last few years, such as the inauguration of the School of Engineering and the creation of the new Science Park.
“I am looking forward to building on the research activity within the School of Humanities and College of Arts, which will not be difficult in a place that was once one of the biggest centres of culture and civilisation in Western Europe.”
Professor Rowland was the first critic to discover the correspondence between Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin in the Emory University archive, and was also elected onto the editorial board of the journals Critical Survey and the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies.
He has organised conferences and panels at universities around the world, including Strasbourg, Turin, Aarhus and Istanbul, and is also a celebrated poet, having been awarded the prestigious Manchester Poetry Prize in 2012.
Professor Rowland joins the Lincoln School of Humanities at a time of significant investment. He is one of a number of new appointments in English and History, which together highlight the University of Lincoln’s commitment to supporting staff, students and research within the humanities sector.