Gavin Hopps

Gavin Hopps is Professor of Literature and Theology, and Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. He has been involved in ITIA since he came to St Andrews as an RCUK Academic Fellow in 2006. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer in English at the universities of Aachen, Oxford and Canterbury Christ Church, and a CRASSH Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research is broadly concerned with theology and the arts, with a particular focus on Romantic literature and contemporary British popular music, though he is also interested in the relationship between theology and modalities of lightness (such as comedy, camp, levity and play). He has published a monograph on Romantic writing (Enchantment in Romantic Literature, 2026), a co-authored monograph with David Brown (The Extravagance of Music, 2018) and a monograph on the singer-songwriter Morrissey. He is the co-editor, with Professor Jane Stabler, of a new edition of the complete poetic works of Byron, the first two volumes of which were published in 2025. He is currently working on a collection of essays on Romanticism and ecotheology, and a monograph on the levity of Byron’s Don Juan.