Emily Holmes grew up in Surrey, England, and earned a BA in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford in 1993. She then pursued a master's degree in Social Science at Uppsala University, Sweden, focusing on haptic perception in blind individuals. After a year at art college, she spent several years in New York, working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leading touch tours for visually impaired visitors, and supporting homeless individuals with mental health challenges. This experience influenced her career path. Holmes returned to the UK, completed her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Royal Holloway University of London in 2000, focusing on PTSD and intrusive memories, and earned a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Cambridge University in 2005. She was awarded the Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2005, and in 2010, she became a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Oxford. From 2012 to 2016, she led a program at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge.