William Radcliffe (born 1978, York) is a British historian of navigation and material culture. Educated at the University of York (BA) and the University of Cambridge (PhD, 2007), he served as a curatorial fellow at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and later lectured in global history at the University of St Andrews. His research has taken him to archives in Lisbon, Goa, and Quanzhou, and onto small boats in the North Sea and the Mozambique Channel. He has written for the London Review of Books and Maritime History, and presented the 2018 BBC Radio 4 series Lines on the Water. His earlier works include Ash and Latitude (2012) and Tides of Paper (2016). He lives in Oxford with his partner, a conservator, and a rescued greyhound.
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