Christopher Warren Named Head of Carnegie Mellon’s Department of English

Carnegie Mellon University has appointed Christopher Warren(opens in new window) the next head of the Department of English(opens in new window), effective Aug. 1.

Warren succeeds Andreea Ritivoi(opens in new window), who has served as department head since 2015 and will step down July 30.

“First, I am profoundly grateful to Andreea Ritivoi, who was a spectacular head during a difficult time, and a wonderful colleague who for many years successfully led the Humanites@CMU Initiative,” said Richard Scheines(opens in new window), Bess Family Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.  

“Chris Warren has become an internationally recognized leader in computational humanities, and his vision to align the department and the humanities more with CMU's strengths in interdisciplinary computing, while fully preserving its humanistic perspective, comes at a perfect time. I am excited to see where he will take English,” Scheines said. 

A professor of English with a courtesy appointment in the Department of History(opens in new window), Warren served as associate department head from 2021 to 2025. An expert in 16th and 17th century literature and culture, including figures like Shakespeare and Milton, Warren is also one of the world's foremost leaders in using technology to ask and answer significant research questions in the humanities.

“Being the head of English at Carnegie Mellon means helping to cultivate the next generation of readers and leaders, which is a profound honor. Since CMU English boasts absolutely world-class faculty, brilliant students and unbelievable staff, the most important aspect of my job will be to help all of our amazing people shine,” Warren said.

CMU’s Department of English promotes the profound value of writing, reading and humanistic inquiry. The department offers 14 academic programs(opens in new window) at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Degree-granting programs span literature and culture, rhetoric, technical writing, professional writing, film and visual media, and creative writing. Beginning in fall 2026, the department will offer a novel Ph.D. in computational cultural studies. In addition, every CMU undergraduate student takes First-Year Writing to develop the skills to adapt to new writing situations and connect their learning to future communication tasks.

Advocacy, research on real-world humanities problems

Active in humanities advocacy(opens in new window) through the National Humanities Alliance, Warren is inspired by real-world humanities problems, such as funding for humanities research and access to books and archives. His research spans digital humanities, law and literature, political theory, early modern literature, print culture, and the history of political thought.

He is co-founder of the digital humanities projects “Freedom and the Press before Freedom of the Press(opens in new window)” and “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon(opens in new window),” both of which received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Currently, Warren is completing a three-month fellowship at the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford. As a Bodleian Libraries Gale Digital Humanities Fellow, he is continuing work associated with his Print & Probability research project(opens in new window), developing computational methods including machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify the clandestine printers of 16th and 17th century books.

In addition, Warren is the author of the book “Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680,” which was awarded the 2016 Roland H. Bainton Prize for literature. A former member of the Modern Language Association's executive committee for 17th-Century English, his articles have appeared in journals including Humanity; Law, Culture, and the Humanities; the European Journal of International Law; English Literary Renaissance; and Digital Humanities Quarterly. 

His previous posts have included teaching positions and research fellowships at Oxford University, University College London's Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, NUI-Galway's Moore Institute and the University of Chicago.​

Warren earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College, a master’s degree in English from Georgetown University and a DPhil. in English from Oxford University.