Affinity Publisher provides support for OpenType font features. These extend the font's character set which lets you present text with a greater degree of typographical control.
Font features supported include ligatures, alternates, swash variants, stylistic sets, and figure positions. You'll also get ligature control via the Text menu's Ligatures sub-menu.
For fonts that support OpenType font features, additional typographic options will be displayed in the Typography panel. OpenType font feature names are displayed in italics.