About
Professor Chloe Wigston Smith is a leading scholar in eighteenth-century literature and material culture at the University of York's Department of English and Related Literature. She holds affiliations with the Eighteenth Century and Romantic Research School and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her research explores intersections between literary history, material culture, and gender studies, with notable works like Women, Work, and Clothes in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2013) and co-edited collections such as Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2020). She has received prestigious fellowships from the Paul Mellon Centre and British Academy, and her work has been recognized with awards including the Percy G. Adams Article Prize (2009).
Her academic journey includes a PhD from the University of Virginia and training in art history at the Courtauld Institute. She previously served as Associate Professor at the University of Georgia. Current projects include a monograph on women’s material entanglements in the Atlantic world and a co-edited volume on Small Things in the Eighteenth Century. She actively collaborates with museums like the V&A and Fairfax House, developing educational programs such as The Story of Things.
Professor Wigston Smith supervises postgraduate research in eighteenth-century studies, emphasizing material culture, visual studies, and transatlantic print culture. She has held editorial roles for Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature and organizes conferences on topics like Small Things in the Eighteenth Century. Her grants include funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Folger Institute.
