J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic specialty before his famous fantasy novels was philology.
Philology studies languages through historical texts, including how words, sounds, and grammatical forms change over time. Tolkien’s professional work focused especially on Germanic languages and medieval literature, including Old and Middle English.
He held academic posts at the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 and later Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945.
Tolkien’s scholarship and fiction were closely connected. His knowledge of Old English, Norse, Welsh, Finnish, and other languages influenced names, poetic forms, myths, and the history of languages in Middle-earth. He was not trained primarily as an archaeologist, astronomer, or botanist, although his stories contain ruins, stars, and detailed natural imagery.