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 submenu.
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.