Strachan, John 1961-

John Strachan FRHS, FRAS, FRSA (born April 1961), is a literary critic, historian and poet, Professor of English and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Bath Spa University, England. Strachan is the current Director of GuildHE Research, and Co-Chair of the Charles Lamb Society. He is active in global higher education, being an Ambassador for the Association of Commonwealth Universities, a Trustee of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Bath, and, since 2023, Chair of the South West and Wales Africa Research Network. Strachan is a Visiting Professor at Adamas University, Kolkata. He was also Chief External Examiner at the Arab Open University, from 2020 to 2025. John Strachan was Dean of the School of Humanities and Cultural Industries at Bath Spa (2013-2015), and has previously held professorships at Northumbria University (2011-2013) and the University of Sunderland (1993-2011). He has also taught at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (1992-1993). Strachan has been a Senior Research Fellow of the British Academy and is Associate Editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Educated at the University of Southampton (BA) and Wolfson College, Oxford (MPhil, DPhil), Strachan specialises in Romanticism, especially late Georgian comic writing (he is the editor of British Satire 1785-1840 (2003) and Parodies of the Romantic Age (1999), and the relationship between advertising and literature, the subject of his monographs Advertising and Satirical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and, with Claire Nally, Advertising, Literature and Print Culture in Ireland, 1891-1922 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He has published three volumes of poetry and, with the late Richard Terry, is author of a widely-used text book,Poetry, published in 2000 (second edition, 2011) by Edinburgh University Press. Strachan has also published numerous articles in the fields of history, sport studies, poetry, and Irish culture. In 2013 he collaborated with numerous artists and poets to create Their Colours and their Forms: Artists' Responses to Wordsworth, an exhibition at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, which included some of his own poetry. He lives in Bath, Somerset. As an author, he is widely held in libraries worldwide.