Eli Cumings is a literary scholar whose work explores the representation and interpretation of human difference in early modernity, with a particular focus on the emergence of racial thought in Reformation England. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2023 with a thesis on human monstrosity, after which she was employed as a research associate on the UK-based project ‘Medicine and the Making of Race, 1440-1720’. Eli's current book project explores how popular theology, particularly the doctrine of providence, shaped thinking about bodily and human difference in early modern England. Her research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).