Stuart D. Lee

Stuart Dermot Lee (born 3 February 1966) is a Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and a specialist in Old English, J. R. R. Tolkien, Fantasy Literature, War Poetry, and digital humanities. He is also a Reader in E-learning at Oxford University, and is best known for his scholarly books on J. R. R. Tolkien. He has written several plays, two of which won Oxford Playhouse new writing awards.

Lee briefly lectured at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College before moving to the University of Oxford, where he worked on the use of information technology for teaching. In 1996 he became Head of the Centre for Humanities Computing there. In 2001 he became head of the university's Learning Technologies Group, in 2005 director of computing systems and services for Oxford University Computing Services, and in 2012 Deputy CIO, and in 2024 as Interim CIO.

He was made a Professor of English in 2024 having taught and researched for many years on Old English, Tolkien, and the poetry of the First World War. Of the book, he wrote that it brought order to the morass of publications on Tolkien, and noted that it finally brought Tolkien into the canon of Anglo-American studies as it was one of the "prestigious" Blackwell Companion series. He described the challenge of making a brief 25-page overview of Tolkien's life, undertaken by John Garth in the volume, "an ", ("a work of giants").

Awards and distinctions

2007 Winner of Oxford Playhouse new writing competition for The Attic 2007 Winner of Oxford Playhouse new writing competition for Never Tell Them 2008 Teaching award, Oxford University 2009 Higher Education Authority National Teaching Fellow 2024 Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford

Books

Literary

2005 The Keys of Middle-earth (with Elizabeth Solopova), Palgrave Macmillan. 2nd edition 2015. 2006 Key Concepts in Medieval Literature (with Elizabeth Solopova), Macmillan. 2013 A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien (edited), Wiley-Blackwell. 2nd edition 2022. 2017 J. R. R. Tolkien (edited), Routledge.

Information technology

2000 Digital Imaging: A Practical Handbook, Facet. 2001 Building an Electronic Resource Collection: A Practical Guide (with Frances Boyle), Facet.