Rhys Kaminski-Jones
Background
Rhys Kaminski-Jones’s work focuses on relationships between Celtic revivalism, Britishness, and empire during the long eighteenth century (c.1680–1830), and on Celtic imperial legacies and modern Celtic revivalism more generally. Other interests (past and future) include queerness and Celticity, political appropriations of the Celts, and the colonial Indian travel journals of Henrietta Clive.
Their monograph ‘Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain’ (Boydell, 2025) reveals how the Welsh used their eighteenth-century cultural revival to position themselves within a new British nation and a growing British empire. Based on new archival research, and incorporating Welsh and English-language sources on topics including race, enlightenment science, druidism, slavery, and sociability, the story that emerges does not downplay the distinctiveness of Welsh revivalism, but instead emphasises its engagement with and importance within the period’s transnational, colonial, and imperial histories.
Specialist Subjects
- Cultural History of the Celtic Revivals
- Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies
- Imperial Legacies in Wales and Other "Celtic" Contexts
Professional and/or Research Experience
Rhys has written widely for scholarly and general-interest publications, including Romanticism, The Review of English Studies, Studies in Romanticism, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, History Today, the Verso Books Blog, and O’r Pedwar Gwynt. They regularly speak at academic conferences, and have been interviewed on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, and the New Books Network. Any and all enquiries about their work are welcome – from inside or outside academia.
Qualifications
- BA English Language and Literature (University of Oxford)
- MA Eighteenth Century Studies (University of York)
- PhD Welsh and Celtic Studies (University of Wales)
Languages Spoken
Academic Teaching
Link to Orcid Profile
Professional Publications
- with Brecht de Groote (eds), European Minor Literatures and Transnational Romanticism (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press)
- Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707–1819: True Britons & Celtic Empires (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2025)
- ‘Queering Thomas Gray’s Celticism’, in Ruth Abbott and Ephraim Levinson (eds), Thomas Gray Among the Disciplines (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025), 168–87
- with Mary-Ann Constantine, ‘“Excuse the Spelling Which is Probably Wrong”: Wordsworth and Tourism’s Welsh Languages’, Studies in Romanticism, 63.2 (2024), 117–41: [https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2024.a931778]
- ‘Anti-Woke Druids and Radical Bards’, Verso Books (2024): [https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/anti-woke-druids-and-radical-bards]
- with Erin Lafford, ‘Change of air: introduction’, Romanticism, 27.2 (2021): 117–21: [https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2021.05]
- ‘‘‘Floating in the Breath of the People”: Ossianic Mist, Cultural health, and the Creation of Celtic Atmosphere, 1760–1815’, Romanticism, 27.2 (2021): 135–48: [https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2021.05]
- ‘William Owen Pughe and Romantic Rewritings of the Poetry of Llywarch Hen’, The Review of English Studies, 73.308 (2022), 100–20: [https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgab039]
- with Francesca Kaminski-Jones (eds), Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic Influence in the Construction of British Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
- with Francesca Kaminski-Jones, ‘Introduction’, in eidem, Celts, Romans, Britons, 1–19
- ‘“Where Cymry United, Delighted Appear”: The Society of Ancient Britons and the Celebration of St David’s Day in London, 1715–1815’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 23 (2017), 56–68