Hannah Williams

Dr. Hannah Williams is a Reader in the History of Art at Queen Mary University of London's School of History. She specializes in 18th-century French art and material culture, with a focus on Parisian art worlds, religious art, and digital humanities. Before joining QMUL in 2019, she held roles including Junior Research Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford, and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at QMUL. Her education includes a PhD and MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a BA from the University of Sydney.

Her research explores social, material, and urban dimensions of the Paris art scene, including studies of artists' possessions, parish church art, and digital mapping projects like Artists in Paris. Key works include Académie Royale: A History in Portraits (2015) and the forthcoming Artists’ Things. She has received awards such as the Prix Marianne Roland Michel and BSECS Digital Resources Award.

Williams teaches modules on urban history and supervises doctoral research in French art, digital humanities, and Enlightenment studies. She is Founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal18 and contributes to public engagement through media appearances and publications on art history topics.