Kevin Gilmartin studies social and political developments in British literature and print culture during the Age of Revolution, an era of social and political upheaval in Europe and the Americas from the late eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century. Looking beyond literary texts, his research considers newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and other print forms to produce a more nuanced and finely grained account of the politics of literary culture. Primarily concerned with the cultural history of British radicalism, he has also written on the history of conservative movements and broadly considers how social and political change reshaped the role of writing and print in society.

He is the author of three books, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1996), Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge, 2007), and William Hazlitt: Political Essayist (Oxford, 2015). With James Chandler, he co-edited the book Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 2005), and more recently edited the volume Sociable Places: Locating Culture in Romantic-Period Britain (Cambridge, 2017). His articles have appeared in several edited volumes and in such journals as Studies in Romanticism, ELH, Representations, and the Journal of British Studies.

Gilmartin is currently at work on two projects. One is a study of shifting representations of poverty, and especially rural poverty, in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between literary and aesthetic representations of the poor and social and political institutions that aimed to relieve poverty. The other is a study of the close engagement of the British New Left, notably E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, with Romantic-period literature and culture

Gilmartin was a professor of Romantic literature in the department of English and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York (2007–2008), where he also held a visiting professorship from 2009 to 2015. At Caltech, he received two ASCIT teaching awards (1997 and 2012) and the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2015). He previously served as the Dean of Undergraduate Students, and is currently the Vice President for Student Affairs at Caltech.