Viv Westbrook is a Cultural Historian whose research interests intersect with a wide range of Arts, Humanities and Science disciplines. She holds a Ph.D. in Reformation Biblical and Cultural Translation (1998), an M.Phil. in Renaissance Paratext (1995) and an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology (2000) from the University of Manchester. She also holds an M.A. in Screenwriting from the University of London and The London Film School (2008). She has a wide-range of degree-level qualifications, including Business Studies (1984), Literary Studies (1992), English Literature and Language (1994), Psychology (2000) and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (2018). She is now training as a Psychotherapist to develop her expertise as an academic mentor.

She has received more than fifty awards, bursaries, fellowships, consultancies and visiting professorships from twenty-six international institutions in the U.K., Europe, USA, Taiwan, Kazakhstan and Australia. Early major awards included a British Academy Award (1995-1998); a University of Notre Dame Research and Tutorial Scholarship (1998); the Taiwan Ministry of Education Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Research (2001) and the Taiwan Presidential Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (2004). She has also been the recipient of five Cambridge Fellowships (2003; 2011; 2020-21). She was invited to National Sun-Yat-Sen University as the Taiwan Ministry of Education Distinguished Visiting Professor (2008) and in 2010 was awarded an Archie K. Davis Fellowship in History at the University of North Carolina, USA, (2010-2012). In 2010 she was the ‘Reach for the Top’ Scholar at National Taiwan University. In 2013 she won a Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology Research Fellowship to pursue work on sharks at the Australian Research Centre of Excellence for the Study of Human Emotion at the University of Western Australia. She holds a 100% track record of research funding from the Ministry of Education and National Science Council as well as Outstanding Teaching Awards.

She has extensive experience of teaching and administration across international cultures. More recently, at KIMEP University in Kazakhstan, she was Full Professor of English and Cultural Studies and a University Research Director. She launched five new Research Associations in five disciplinary areas to encourage international research collaborations, for which she established websites, and founded the journal, Language, Culture, Environment. She served on Senate, Academic Council, was Chair of the University Promotions and Retentions Committee, Chair of Strategic Research, Research Directors’ Committee, and the New Library, Systems Centralisation, and Web-Design Committees. She also chaired the Environmental Research Association.

She has published extensively on the subject of appropriation and representation across ages, cultures and media. Her current focus is on Critical Humour Studies and Environmental Humanities. She is the Founding General Editor of two Taylor & Francis (Routledge) series: Humour in Literature and Culture, and Oceans, Seas and Shorelines: a natural and cultural environmental history. Her most recent work is Humour in Times of Confrontation (London and New York: Routledge, 2025); Oceans Seas and Shorelines in Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2026) and Oceans, Seas and Shorelines: an Overview (London and New York: Routledge, 2026).