Karin Sellberg specialises in medical humanities, feminist and queer historiography, contemporary fiction and theories of gender, sexuality, disability,.embodiment and time. She is particularly interested in convergences and communication between feminist and queer fiction, and the intellectual history of science and medicine. She is currently working on transwomen's writing, transgender history, and different ideas of transitioning in trans* studies, feminist philosophy and the fiction of Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter and Caitlin R. Kiernan.
Karin joined UQ as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in January 2014, and a lecturer in humanities in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry in 2017. Before this she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and a postdoctoral teaching fellowship in the English Literature department at the University of Edinburgh. She was also co-director of the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School from 2012 to 2014, and has organised four large international conferences, "Bodies in Movement: Intersecting Discourses of Materiality in the Sciences and the Arts" (University of Edinburgh), "Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment" (University of Edinburgh), "Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment: the 10th Somatechnics Conference" (SCU/UQ) and the "CSAA Conference 2019: Cultural Transformations".
Dr Walters has published on Cavendish, Shakespeare, Milton, and Renaissance women in relation to gender, science, philosophy, sexuality and political thought. She welcomes research proposals relating to these topics.
She is author of Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (Cambridge University Press, hardback 2014, paperback 2017) and is editor of The Blazing World and other Writings, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2025), which is the first edition to modernise the spelling and grammar of Cavendish’s prose fiction. Her co-edited volume, Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2022), was published by Cambridge University Press and won Co-Honorable Mention for the 2022 Collaborative Project Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender.She is also co-editor of the Restoration section of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing (2021-2026); the General Editors won the 2025 Digital Scholarship, New Media, & Art Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender. In addition, she is co-editor of Cavendish and Milton, which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Currently, she is co-editing Cavendish's Philosophy of Literature, which is under contract with Routledge.
Dr Walters is also Deputy Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) and is the Honours Thesis Coordinator for the Western Civilisation Centre.
She obtained her doctorate and masters degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her BA from the University of California Santa Cruz. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium. She has also held academic positions in England, America, and Scotland and was a visiting professor at Université Catholique de Lille, France. Between studies, she worked in Tokyo, Japan.
Currently, she serves on the Editorial Board of ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, Anthem Press, and was President of the International Margaret Cavendish Society. She is the founder and managing editor of Margaret Cavendish: A Multidisciplinary Journal.
Books
Lisa Walters. Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (Cambridge University Press, hardback 2014, paperback 2017)
Lisa Walters and Brandie Siegfried, eds. Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Lisa Walters, ed. The Blazing World and other Writings, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2025)
Suzanne Trill, Natasha Simonova, and Lisa Walters, eds. "Restoration."Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing (Palgrave 2020-2025).
Ann Coiro, Lara Dodds, and Lisa Walters, eds. Cavendish and Milton (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
Daniel Whiting and Lisa Walters, eds. Cavendish's Philosophy of Literature (under contract with Routledge)
