Dr Elizabeth Williamson

Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature and Digital Humanities

Dr Elizabeth Williamson's research sits at the intersection between Renaissance literature, historical enquiry, archival studies and the digital humanities. Her interests include early modern archives and epistolary culture, especially in a diplomatic and governmental context; the practical and theoretical concerns of the Digital Humanities; and textual scholarship and digital publication. Before joining Exeter she co-edited documentary editions of thirty plays by authors other than Shakespeare for A Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Her book, Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture (2021), delves into letter-writing, information gathering, and intelligencing in Elizabethan politics, across the early modern and digital archive.

From September 2025, she is Co-Investigator on the Leverhulme-funded 'Shakespearean Graves: Literature and the Anglophone Way of Death', with PI Philip Schwyzer, and Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded 'An exploration of the use of AI in performance and new media art documentation within collections and archives' with PI Gabriella Giannachi.

Research supervision:

Lizzy is currently supervising PhD students and welcomes enquiries from potential applicants who wish to discuss research proposals within her fields of expertise. She is especially interested to work with students wishing to work between early modern studies and the digital humanities, particularly early modern and digital archives, manuscript studies and text technologies, and textual scholarship and digital publication. She would also be very happy to hear from those interested in early modern diplomacy and epistolary culture.