Henry Woudhuysen

Henry Ruxton Woudhuysen, (born 24 October 1954), is a British academic specialising in Renaissance English literature. He was the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford from 2012 to 2024. He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London.

Biography Woudhuysen was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and studied for MA and DPhil degrees at Pembroke College, Oxford. His first academic role was at Lincoln College as a Junior Research Fellow in English Literature in 1978 before he joined University College London.

In 2010, Woudhuysen was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Between 1995 and 2020 Woudhuysen served as a general editor for the third series of the Arden Shakespeare.

The Oxford Companion to the Book which he edited with Michael F. Suarez was published in 2010.

The Book: A Global History by Woudhuysen and Michael F. Suarez was published in 2013.

In 2023 he gave the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library.

Personal life Woudhuysen is married to Deborah Loudon, a former HR director in the Home Office. Their son George is a historian of the Roman Empire at the University of Nottingham.