LAURENCE WILLIAMS

My current research explores the interactions between Utopian theory and British travel writing since the eighteenth century, focusing in particular on narratives of Asia. My personal website is www.laurencewilliams.net (hyperlink below).

I have published widely on British imperial narratives of Japan, China, and the Pacific, including books on Pacific Gateways: Trans-Oceanic Narratives and Anglophone Literature, 1780-1914 (co-edited with Tomoe Kumojima, 2024) and British Romanticism in Asia (co-edited with Alex Watson, 2019).

I have also guest-edited (with Steve Clark) a special issue of Studies in Travel Writing on "Isabella Bird, Victorian Women's Travel Writing, and Japan" (2017). I have published essays in journals including the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and edited volumes including New Directions in Travel Writing, and (forthcoming) the Bloomsbury Handbook of Romanticism in Britain and Asia. I am also a series editor for the Palgrave series "Asia-Pacific and Literature in English".

I am on sabbatical from April 2025-April 2026.