Helen’s research interests broadly lie in eighteenth-century book history, professional authorship and literary heritage, and she is particularly interested in heritage collaboration. Her publications undertake a feminist recovery of women's work in book production and explore the effects of writers’ relationships with their patrons and publishers on the production of bestselling literary texts.

Helen is the author of Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book (Cambridge University Press, 2021), co-director of Laurence Sterne and Sterneana (Cambridge Digital Library, 2019), and co-editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of John Cleland (2023). 

Helen Williams is Associate Professor of English Literature, Acting Deputy Director of Cultural Partnerships, and leads the Scholarly Editing and Print Cultures Research Group. 

Helen received her BA from Northumbria University and her MA from Durham University. She then returned to Northumbria, completing a PhD in collaboration with the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall in 2014. She joined the faculty at Northumbria in 2012. 

In collaboration with the Worshipful Company of Stationers, she holds a British Academy Innovation Fellowship entitled 'Communicating Women's Work in the Historical Archive' (2022-2023), exploring the history of eighteenth-century women in the book trades.