Biography

Professor Hugh Houghton studied Classics at Cambridge and Theology at Leeds before returning to his native West Midlands for a doctorate at Birmingham on Augustine, later published by Oxford University Press as Augustine's Text of John. His postdoctoral work as co-editor of the Vetus Latina edition of the earliest Latin texts of the Gospel according to John, combining textual scholarship with the development of digital tools and online editions, has set the tone for his career.

He has been a member of Birmingham's Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) since its foundation in 2005, and was appointed its Director in October 2017. His election as Executive Editor of the Pauline Epistles for the International Greek New Testament Project led to his subsequent nomination as a General Editor for the Pauline volumes in the Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior. In 2021, he was appointed by the United Bible Societies to the editorial committee of the UBS Greek New Testament and the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, and has been executive editor of the book series Texts and Studies since 2012. His advisory board appointments have included the Biblindex project, Editing Aphra Behn in the Digital Age, the Armarium Codicum Hibernensium and the British Library's Greek Manuscripts Digitisation project.

Professor Houghton is well known as a specialist on the text of the New Testament and author of the first English-language monograph dedicated to the Latin tradition (The Latin New Testament, Oxford University Press, 2016). Early highlights of his research included the identification of two new manuscript witnesses to the pre-Vulgate text of the Gospels and the rediscovery of images of one of the most important Latin Bibles from Spain. He has been a corresponding editor of the Vetus Latina Institute since 2010. His translation of the rediscovered Commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia was the focus of international media attention in August 2017, with newspaper reports across the globe and appearances on BBC Radio 4, KCBS San Francisco and Premier Christian Radio.

As a researcher, Professor Houghton has been awarded major European Research Council grants for the COMPAUL project on the earliest commentaries on the Pauline Epistles (2011–16) and the CATENA project on the Greek New Testament (2018–23). He has also led two Anglo-German projects, the first to create the Workspace for Collaborative Editing (2010–13) and the second on early translations of the Pauline Epistles (GALaCSy, 2022–25). He was a contributor to the Digital Codex Sinaiticus, and co-investigator on the AHRC Codex Zacynthius Project (2018–20) for which he produced the first English translation of a Greek catena manuscript. From 2022–27, he is a member of the KU Leuven Research Unit Biblical Studies, contributing to the FWO 1COR project on the text of 1 Corinthians.

Professor Houghton has organised the biennial Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament since 2007, and hosted multiple series of online events during the coronavirus pandemic. He chaired the board for the British Patristics Conference at Birmingham in 2016, and served as a Director of the International Patristics Conference held in Oxford in 2019. He is currently Program Unit Chair of the ECM session for the Society of Biblical Literature and one of the convenors of the textual criticism seminar for the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. From 2021–23, he has been appointed as a member of the review college for the Belgian National Research Agency (FWO). He has given a variety of keynote addresses, including the Graham Stanton Memorial Lecture for the British New Testament Society in 2020.

Professor Houghton has supervised a wide range of international postgraduate research students, several of whom have won highly competitive scholarships. He has been lead supervisor for 19 doctoral projects, with a high proportion of candidates going onto academic posts upon completion.

He has sung with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra chorus for twenty years, and held parochial appointments in the dioceses of Oxford and Birmingham.