Fara Dabhoiwala
Visiting Research Fellow
fnd@princeton.edu
Francis Williams and his portrait
I teach at Princeton, and write about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the English-speaking world, from the middle ages to the present. I previously taught at Oxford, where I am now a life fellow of All Souls College and of Exeter College. I am a Visiting Research Fellow at VARI 2024 – 2027, and a Visiting Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge during 2024–25.
My book What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea will be published in 2025 by Penguin Random House and Harvard University Press. I am writing the first-ever biography, based on newly discovered sources, of the 18th-century Black Jamaican polymath Francis Williams (c. 1690–1762), whose portrait is at the V&A. I am also the author of The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution, which has been translated into several languages.