Edwin Williamson was Professorial Fellow of Exeter College from 2003 until 2017. He also held the King Alfonso XIII Chair of Spanish at Oxford until his retirement. Before coming to Oxford he was the Forbes Professor of Hispanic Studies at Edinburgh University, and held academic posts at Trinity College, Dublin, and Birkbeck College, University of London. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, California, and at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. His books include The Penguin History of Latin America, and the biography, Borges: A Life, published in 2004 by Viking Penguin.