WS Monroe is a librarian, historian, folk musician, and Quaker, living in Providence, Rhode Island (RI). Known generally as Bill Monroe, which gets a little confusing in folk music circles (but easy to remember), he tends to use the full name “William S. Monroe” in publications and official documents. He grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a small (formerly) industrial city on the Schuylkill, about 40 miles from Philadelphia, and worked in factories there after high school, until he’d had enough and moved on to study history at Temple University. After adding an MS in library science from Drexel University, he got his first professional position at Teachers’ College of Columbia University, and began working on a PhD in medieval history. Since then, he has been a librarian at New York University and at Brown University, where he is currently the subject librarian for Classics, Medieval Studies, Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, Religious Studies, Philosophy, and a number of other subjects, as well as serving as the curator of medieval manuscripts and early printed books. He used to have a page on the Brown website for research and researchers at Brown, but that was shifted over to a VIVO site, and the Dean of the Faculty decided that the page should be open only to faculty. So, best to go to Academia.edu, which page needs more work: http://brown.academia.edu/WilliamMonroe
ORCID : 000-003-3252-2121
His research interests lie mostly in the early Middle Ages, and he is still writing a dissertation for Columbia on the life, career, and infamous afterlife of Pope Formosus (Pope from 891-896). More about this will be forthcoming on the Medieval History page.
Musical interests lie chiefly in folk music of all sorts, but especially in the traditional music of the British Isles and North America, and music of the “folk music revival” of the 1960’s and ’70’s. For more about that, see the Music page.
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