A professor of English and comparative literature, Prof. Powell’s academic interests are in 18th-century British literature and culture, which extends to historical publishing, women’s periodicals and narratives of piracy. 

Her books include “Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals” (Bucknell 2012), “British Pirates in Print and Performance” (with Frederick Burwick: Palgrave 2015) and “Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690–1820s” (ed. with Jennie Batchelor: Edinburgh 2018). She is the editor of the Broadview Press edition of Daniel Defoe's “Captain Singleton” (2019), and plans a new edition of “The Buccaneers of America” for 2025. She is also the author of the Wondrium “The Real History of Pirates” course, and her essay on pirates and hook prosthetics will appear shortly in the Digital Defoe journal.