Professor Clive Holes

Department: The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Background

I was educated at High Arcal Grammar School, Dudley, West Midlands and got my BA in Arabic and Turkish from Cambridge University (at Trinity Hall) in 1969 (MA 1973), and my PhD in Arabic Linguistics at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 1981. I also did an MA in English Language at Birmingham University in 1971-2. During the 1970s and early 80s, I was an Overseas Career Officer of the British Council, serving in Bahrain, Kuwait, Algeria, Iraq and Thailand. I was also involved in planning and setting up Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman in the mid-80s and was the Director of its Language Centre 1985-7 whilst on leave from Salford University, where I was Lecturer in Arabic and Applied Linguistics 1983-7. In 1987 I returned to the UK to take up a Lectureship in Arabic at Cambridge and a Tutorial Fellowship at Trinity Hall, being promoted to Reader in Arabic in 1996. In January 1997 I arrived at Magdalen and the Oriental Institute to take up the Khalid bin Abdullah Al-Saud Chair for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World. I was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002. I became Emeritus Professor in 2014. I was President of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) 2017-2021, and am a Trustee of the International Association for the Study of Arabia (IASA).

Research Interests

Selected Publications

Recent books

Children’s books

Recent articles