Professor Watson's research encompasses a wide range of topics including the history of mysticism and devotion, the development of English vernacular culture and theology, sacred biography and its audiences, and women's literature. He is the author of Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Balaam's Ass: Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation, Volume 1: Frameworks, Arguments, English to 1250 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), and editor or co-editor of numerous works and edited volumes, including Ancrene Wisse (Paulist Press, 1991), Richard Rolle's Emendatio vitae (Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1995), the works of Julian of Norwich (Brepols, 2006), John of Morigny's Liber florum celestis doctrine (Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 2015), The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), and What Kind of Thing is a Middle English Lyric? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). Prof. Watson was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2016.