Helen Williams

Helen Williams is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Co-Director of University Cultural Partnerships at Northumbria University. She leads the Scholarly Editing and Print Cultures Research Group and holds affiliations with the Laurence Sterne Trust. Her academic roles include fostering collaborations with cultural institutions such as galleries, museums, and theaters.

Educated at Northumbria University (BA) and Durham University (MA), she completed her PhD in 2014 at Northumbria in collaboration with the Laurence Sterne Trust. She has been at Northumbria since 2012.

Her research focuses on book history, literary heritage, and heritage collaboration, with particular attention to women’s roles in the 18th-century book trades and medical professions in literature. She has authored or co-edited works such as Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book (2021) and Myth and (Mis)information (2024).

Her recent articles explore topics like posthumous publications, medical publishing practices, and digital humanities approaches to Sterneana. Awards include the British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2022–2024) and multiple grants from the AHRC and Leverhulme Trust.

Williams oversees cultural partnerships, enhancing research and community engagement. Her current projects include a monograph on women in the book trades and a Cambridge Element on Cottonian bookbinding.