Holly conducts research in rhetoric and composition, with a primary focus on the discursive construction of neurodivergent identities. Her article “‘Demi-autistic, genetically speaking’: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the Aspergian Loop,” forthcoming from the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies in 2026, investigates the social construction and conditioning of “Aspergian” subjects in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. For this project, Holly was awarded a travel grant from Wake Forest University in 2023 to support an extended visit to the Margaret Atwood archives in Toronto, Canada. She has also conducted research on disaster rhetoric in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Holly was the 2024-2025 Erika Lindemann Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literature’s Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies program. This fellowship is awarded to one incoming PhD student per year to support their research and professional development in the discipline. She also acts as a research assistant for a joint project between UNC Chapel Hill’s HHIVE and DLC labs, “Forever Chemicals: A Story Archive.”