Diane Watt

I am Professor of English Literature, Associate Head of School, Research and Innovation, and Co-Director of SGS (the Sex, Gender and Sexualities Research Centre). My main research and teaching interests are in the areas of medieval literature, women's writing, gender and sexuality and creative nonfiction. I recently co-edited with Corinne Saunders Women and Medieval Literary Culture from the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge University Press: 2023), which won a 2024 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Titles. My most recent book entitled God’s Own Gentlewoman: The Life of Margaret Paston was published in 2024 by Icon Books. With Liz Herbert McAvoy and Michelle M. Sauer, I am joint Editor-in-Chief of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. With Katherine Binhammer and Isobel Grundy, I am co-authoring the first volume of a feminist literary history of women’s writing in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (for Cambridge University Press), which combines digital humanities scholarship (the Orlando text base) and traditional scholarship.

A former member of the AHRC Peer Review College and AHRC panelist, I have also served as a panelist and reviewer for the ERC and as a research assessor for UKRI, the Leverhulme Trust and for other research funding organisations in North America and Europe.