After obtaining a PhD at the University of Leeds, Holmes moved to the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She published a textbook Introduction to Sociolinguistics which has run to four editions. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and won the Dame Joan Metge Medal in 2012.[1] She is now an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics.[2] She currently leads the Wellington Language in the Workplace (LWP) project,[3] an ongoing study of communication formats occurring in the workplace, which examines “small talk, humour, management strategies, directives, and leadership in a wide range of New Zealand workplaces”.