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Dr Julian Holder

Fellow, Visiting Fellow

Tutor in Architectural History

Department for Continuing Education

Dr Julian Holder is a Tutor in Architectural History at Rewley House and has a dual career as both an academic and conservationist.  Although his first love was medieval architecture he is best known as a historian of modern architecture.

After a brief paddle in archaeology he trained as a librarian at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) before undertaking post-graduate work in architectural history at University College London. Following a series of lecturing posts (London, Kent, Loughborough) he left academia in the early 1990s to work in conservation as the first Casework Officer of the Twentieth Century Society during the early years of the controversial listing of post-war architecture. Amongst his more high-profile cases was stopping the demolition of Bankside Power station in 1992 – now better known as Tate Modern. In 2000 he was appointed Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies at Edinburgh College of Art School of Architecture and prior to coming to Oxford spent a decade working as an Inspector of Historic Buildings with English Heritage.

His research interests are centred on the architecture and design of the last two hundred years, his most recent publication (with Elizabeth McKellar) being ‘Neo-Georgian architecture; a reappraisal, 1880-1970’, which grew out of a conference at Rewley House on Suburbia. His next book, ‘Beauty’s awakening’, on the architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement, is due for publication in 2020. He is a Deputy Editor of ‘Architectural History’, and, as the former Education Officer of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain established its annual PhD Workshop and grants programme.

He continues to advise CADW on listing policy, sits on the Northern Buildings Committee of the Victorian Society, the Canal and Rivers Trust Partnership for the north-west, and is an Expert Advisor to the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles on twentieth century heritage.