wsmonroe

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.   Since then he has added MS in library and Information Science from Drexel University, and a PhD in medieval history from Columbia University.  The latter degree was done entirely part-time while working as 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

or to Research Gate:  https://www.researchgate.net/

ORCID : 000-003-3252-2121

His research interests lie mostly in the early Middle Ages, and he defended his dissertation at Columbia on the life, career, and infamous afterlife of Pope Formosus (pope from 891-896) in March 2021.

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, and for some songs, see the Bandcamp page at:  https://wsmonroe.bandcamp.com/.