Rate My Professor Brett Holman

Dr. Brett Holman is a historian and former lecturer in Modern European History in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, a position he assumed in July 2013. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Melbourne, completed in 2009, with a thesis that evolved into his monograph The Next War in the Air: Britain’s Fear of the Bomber, 1908–1941, published by Ashgate in 2014 and reissued in paperback by Routledge in 2017. Earlier, Holman earned a Master of Science by research in Physics from the University of Melbourne in 1998, reflecting a transition from astrophysics training and IT work at the University of Melbourne to historical scholarship. His academic trajectory underscores a deep commitment to interdisciplinary approaches in understanding technological and cultural shifts.

Holman’s research centers on the integration of aviation into British society and culture during the first half of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on airmindedness—the public fascination with aircraft—and the pervasive fear of strategic bombing, including the anticipated 'knock-out blow from the air' and responses to actual raids by German Zeppelins and Gothas in World War I. Key themes in his work include aerial theatre, exemplified by interwar air displays like the Royal Air Force Display at Hendon; air panics such as mystery aeroplanes and phantom airships; and airpower doctrines like reprisal bombing and the convertibility of airliners. He has authored peer-reviewed articles on the militarisation of air displays, secret Zeppelin bases, and conspiracy theories surrounding air raids. Holman received a University of New England Research Seed Grant and served as a partner investigator on the ARC Linkage Project LP160101232, ‘Heritage of the Air: How Aviation Transformed Australia’. His contributions extend to public history in outlets including BBC History Magazine, Wartime, Fortean Times, and Flightpath. Holman is currently authoring Home Fires Burning: Britain’s First War from the Air, contracted to Cambridge University Press.