A Professor of English Literature, Professor Abigail Williams joins King's in 2026 as the Executive Dean for the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. 

As Executive Dean, Professor Williams provides leadership and strategic direction for the faculty, supported by the Vice-Deans, Director of Operations, Heads of Cluster, Department leads, and Professional Services staff. The Faculty consists of 11 departments, teaching over 6,000 students across disciplines.

Professor Williams joins King's from the University of Oxford where she was the Associate Head of Research and Innovation for the Humanities Division.

Abigail’s research interests in eighteenth century literature have generated a number of collaborative projects, in the museum and heritage sectors and in creative industries. She writes and presents on cultural topics for BBC Radio 4, and her most recent BBC Radio 4 series include, Pride or Prejudice: How We Read Now (2022) and I Feel Therefore I Am (2023). She also served as a non-executive director of Oxford University Innovation, a trustee of the St Peter’s College Foundation, and a trustee of the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, east London.

She is currently finishing a book for Allen Lane Penguin on class, culture and autobiography.

 

Works

Professor Williams has authored a number of monographs including:

Reading it Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature
A study of the many ways in which texts are misread, offering intriguing parallels with contemporary internet parody and digital culture.

The Social Life of Books
Investigates the social history of reading and the ways in which books were used and enjoyed within homes.

A scholarly edition of Jonathan Swift’s Journal to Stella for Cambridge University Press’s multi-volume Collected Works of Jonathan Swift . It included deciphering Swift's bizarre baby language and manuscript obliterations.

 

Research

Professor Williams was a Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Research Project, the Digital Miscellanies Index. A freely available database enabling researchers to track the changing fortunes of individual poems and authors across the thousand or so miscellanies (popular poetic anthologies) published during the eighteenth century.

She also led the Reading the Room project, a collaboration with the National Trust focussed on increasing access to books in heritage settings.

At the University of Oxford, Professor Williams was the Associate Head of Research and Innovation for the Humanities Division between 2023 and 2025. She was also Director of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation 2021-23; Knowledge Exchange Champion 2013-15 and was Lord White Fellow and Tutor in English at St Peter's College 2001-25.