Dr Kelsey Williams

Associate Professor

English Studies University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Dr Kelsey Williams

Contact details

About me

MSt, DPhil (Oxon.), FSAS, FHEA.

After completing my MSt and DPhil at Balliol College, Oxford, I was a lecturer at Jesus College, Oxford, and subsequently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews. I joined the University of Stirling in 2016.

I study the history of the book, mostly in early modernity and often in Scotland.  My latest monograph – ‘Some bonie litle bookes’: A History and Catalogue of the Lindsay Library, 1570-1792 (co-authored with William Zachs) – is now available from Brill and I’m currently working on two new projects: Bibliomania: Portrait of an Obsession (under contract with Oxford University Press), a study of the remarkable book-collecting career of the 2nd Earl Spencer, and Thomas Frognall Dibdin's 1836 Scottish Tour Revisited (co-authored with William Zachs; under contract with the Roxburghe Club), an examination and amplification of one of the seminal moments in nineteenth-century Scottish book history.

Of my previous books, The First Scottish Enlightenment: Rebels, Priest, and History (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a substantial reassessment of the Scottish Early Enlightenment and my first monograph – The Antiquary: John Aubrey’s Historical Scholarship (Oxford University Press, 2016) – was a study of the working methods of one of seventeenth-century Britain’s most innovative scholars. In between, I wrote the main commentary for and co-edited Aubrey’s Villa: An Edition of Bodleian MS Aubrey 17, Designatio de Easton-Piers in Com: Wilts (Old School Press, 2018).

In addition to these larger projects, I’ve also published or spoken on numerous aspects of early modern Scottish culture, Latin, Scots, and Gaelic poetry, the history of books, book collecting, and reading, canon and disciplinary formation, epigraphy and carved stones, Scandinavian state-sponsored antiquarianism, and early modern understandings of the ancient past.

I am also the director of the Pathfoot Press, the University of Stirling’s centre for letterpress learning and teaching. There I print – mostly Scots writing, ancient and modern – teach and talk to people about what letterpress is and why it matters more than ever in a digital age.

In addition, I serve as publications secretary of the Scottish History Society, established in 1886 and currently one of the oldest publication societies in Great Britain. In that capacity, I would be delighted to hear from anyone interested in publishing editions of primary texts from Scotland’s past.

At present (2024) I am undertaking a Senior Research Fellowship at Blackie House Library and Museum in Edinburgh, working with the team there on all aspects of cataloguing, acquisitions, access, and development.

I welcome enquiries from students on all of these topics.  If Scotland, material culture, old books, or printing are all or any of your cups of tea, drop me a line!

Award

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
University of St Andrews

I was funded by the British Academy to undertake a three-year research project based at the University of St Andrews with the title "Writing Scotland: Antiquarianism, Confessionalism, and National Identity in Early Modern Europe". The fruits of that research are now forthcoming as a monograph from Oxford University Press under the title, "The First Scottish Enlightenment".

Katharine Briggs Award Short List, 2017

My first monograph, "The Antiquary", was short-listed for the Katharine Briggs Award in 2017.

Professional membership

Council Member of the Scottish History Society

http://scottishhistorysociety.com/
I am a council member of the Scottish History Society, the leading publisher of original sources relating to the history of Scotland.

Secretary of the Universities Committee for Scottish Literature

https://ucsl-scotland.com/
From 2017 to 2022 I served as secretary for the Universities Committee for Scottish Literature, a national body of academics concerned with the condition, development and promotion of Scottish literary studies in higher education.

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
https://www.socantscot.org/
I am a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, one of the nation's oldest learned societies (founded in 1780), whose purpose is “to investigate both antiquities and natural and civil history in general, with the intention that the talents of mankind should be cultivated and that the study of natural and useful sciences should be promoted”.

General Editor of the Scottish History Society
I am the publications secretary and general editor of the Scottish History Society, Scotland's leading society for the publication of previously unpublished historical texts.

Professional qualification

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research programmes

Research centres/groups

Research themes