PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

A full professor in the Department in English at York University, Toronto, Dr Williams was recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, and also holds a two-year Killam Research Fellowship for her work on girl performers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

As the York PIMS fellow, Professor Williams will be conducting research on Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, a tenth-century German abbess who wrote six plays, all in conversation with the six plays of Terence, for the girls of her religious community. Professor Williams’ research interest extends, more generally, to girl performers in the religious plays of medieval France and England and how their presence relates to critical and scholarly assumptions about the all-male stage.