The first part of the talk will be devoted to developments in the study of higher-dimensional black holes, using in particular the blackfold approach which is an effective theory describing these black hole and brane solutions. I will first give an introduction to the blackfold approach. Then I will present new results applying the blackfold effective theory to black holes in non-trivial backgrounds and finding novel charged and spinning black holes.

The second part of the talk is concerned with holographic applications of black hole solutions, starting with a review of Lifshitz Holography and providing new results concerning a class of black brane solutions in Lifshitz spacetimes that have a non-zero momentum.