Lee Ching Nga Hedda specializes in witchcraft history, gender studies, and early modern European history. Her current research offers insight into the investigation of early modern English newspapers, which have been considerably overlooked, in witchcraft studies apart from official trial records and other print materials. Despite being fragmented, dispersed, and incomplete, this project attempts to bind them into a single, interconnected grid. A more comprehensive picture of witchcraft studies will be provided in terms of the construction of oral culture and public opinions, the diversity of the results of the trials, the politicization of domestic and foreign witchcraft aligning with the rise of proto nationalism, the gender implications, and the continuity and decline of supernatural power in early modern England. Altogether, the examination of the previously ignored source helps re-examine the taken-for-granted claims in the field and calls for more scholarly attention in the future.

She has recently attended the summer school organized by the London Rare Books School on the materiality and nature of early modern English books. At the same time, she has conducted archival visits to the British Library, the Bodleian Libraries, the Guildhall Library, the Wellcome Collection, the National Archives, and the Lambeth Palace Library to gather primary sources for her research and to build international linkages. To foster academic exchange and engage with Europe’s rich historical archives, she will be a visiting student at the European University Institute in Florence during the autumn semester of 2026.