Our People

Professor Claire Williams

Claire Williams

Professor Claire Williams

  • Fellow and Tutor in Portuguese
  • Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture

I am Fellow and Tutor in Portuguese at St Peter’s and a member of the Sub-Faculty of Portuguese (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages), where I am Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture. I came to Oxford in 2009 after teaching for eight years at the University of Liverpool. My doctoral thesis focused on the works of the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, and I still teach and write about her. I am fascinated by the variety of novels and films that come out of Brazil and keen to promote Brazilian culture as widely as possible – there’s a lot more going on than football, samba and favelas.

For ten years, now, I have organized the University’s annual Brazil Week which celebrates the fact that there are so many academics and students at the University of Oxford who are working in and on Brazil, and to bring them together. You can find a report about Brazil Week 2025 here.

I was President of Wisps (Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies) from 2006 to 2009 and the General Secretary of ABIL (Association of British and Irish Lusitanists) from 2009 to 2013. I am the Portuguese representative on the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW), based at the Institute for Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of London, where where I edit the Portuguese Author Pages. I am co-organising a series of events on the theme of ‘The Business of Women’s Writing’ for the CCWW in 2026. I sit on the Editorial Board of several academic journals, including Portuguese Studies, the Journal of Lusophone Studies, estudos de literatura brasileira contemporânea, and the Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies.

Teaching

I lecture on Modern Literature from the Portuguese-speaking world (from Machado de Assis and Aluísio de Azevedo to Conceição Evaristo and Luiz Ruffato) and teach other courses such as Brazilian Cinema and Contemporary Brazilian Fiction. I also collaborate with colleagues from the Portuguese and Spanish Sub-Faculties on courses such as Lusophone Women’s Literature and Latin American Cinema.

Research

My research focuses on women’s writing and minority writing from the Lusophone world, particularly Clarice Lispector and Conceição Evaristo (Brazil), Maria Gabriela Llansol, Maria Ondina Braga and Ana Luísa Amaral (Portugal), and Lília Momplé (Mozambique). I am interested in women’s life-writing (especially biography), travel writing, marginal literature, and translation. I am one of the editors and translators participating in the online project ‘Praça Clóvis: Mapeamento Crítico da Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea’ which presents short reviews of contemporary Brazilian novels. I am a member of the following research networks and groups:

Selected publications

Biografias no Feminino, co-edited with Isabel Cristina Mateus (Imprensa Nacional, 2023)

After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Adriana X. Jacobs (Legenda/MHRA, 2022)

Clarice Lispector entrevista, editor (Rocco, 2024)

Feminine Plural: Women in Transition in Life-Writing in the Luso-Hispanic World, co-edited with Maria-José Blanco (Peter Lang, forthcoming 2025)