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Professor / Project Leader
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS)
Tel: 01970 636543
Email: mary-ann.constantine@cymru.ac.uk
Role in the University
Professor / Project Leader
Background
I work on Romantic-era Welsh literature in both Welsh and English. I took my first degree in English Literature at Clare College, Cambridge (1988–91), and stayed on to do a PhD in Breton folklore. I moved to Aberystwyth in 1995 and held a succession of research fellowships in the Welsh Department at Aberystwyth University.
During this period I taught various topics in Welsh and Celtic Studies, and continued work on the ballad tradition in Brittany. I joined CAWCS as leader of the Iolo Morganwg project in 2002 and since then I have led a variety of funded projects looking at the literature and history of Wales, England and the Celtic-speaking countries 1700–1900.
Academic Interests
Undergraduate and MA courses
I have taught undergraduate courses in Celtic studies including comparative Celtic cultures, aspects of folklore in Celtic-speaking countries, and an Introduction to Welsh Literature.
I have supervised MA dissertations on topics ranging from the travels of Edward Lhuyd to the novels of John Cowper Powys.
I am especially interested in the impact of the eighteenth-century ‘Bardic Revival’ on the literatures of Wales, England, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany, and in modern reimaginings of medieval texts.
Postgraduate research
I have directed, co-supervised or examined PhDs on a variety of topics including ‘Ancient British identities in eighteenth-century Britain; northern English travellers to Wales and Scotland (1760–1820); the writer and antiquarian Richard Fenton; the cultural histories of the Tweed and the Cleddau; changing perceptions of healing wells in Wales; Breton and Scottish ballads.
I welcome proposals for research into any aspect of the literature (in Welsh and/or English) of Romantic-era Wales or Brittany, and particularly work relating to travel writing, antiquarianism or the French Revolution.
Research Interests
Ports, Past and Present
I am currently CAWCS institutional lead on a multi-partner project led by University College Cork and in collaboration with Aberystwyth University and Wexford County Council. This project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Co-operation Programme.
It explores the history and heritage of five port towns around the Irish Sea – Dublin, Rosslare, Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock – and works with port communities to improve knowledge of and access to those stories. CAWCS has commissioned twelve artists and writers to help bring this heritage to life. See https://portspastpresent.eu.
Curious Travellers
Another strand of my current research focuses on travel writing, the Welsh Tour, and the writings of Thomas Pennant (1726–98). It derives from a major four-year project funded by the AHRC: ‘Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and the Welsh and Scottish Tour 1760–1820’.
This interdisciplinary project has produced online critical editions of previously unpublished letters and tours, and explores the period’s attitude to the British ‘peripheries’ through art, literature, history, antiquarianism and the natural sciences. See www.curioustravellers.ac.uk
Wales and the French Revolution
In 2009 I began a four-year AHRC-funded project on ‘Wales and the French Revolution’. The project grew out of frustration at the relative invisibility of Wales in current criticism, even in so-called ‘Four Nations’ writing.
With Dafydd Johnston, I am general editor of a series of ten volumes which bring together a range of responses to the turbulent 1790s in Welsh and English, including printed ballads, letters, newspaper articles, poetry, pamphlets and sermons.
My contribution to the series, co-edited with Paul Frame, is an edition of a letters written from revolutionary France by a Glamorgan-based scientist and Dissenting minister: Travels in Revolutionary France & A Journey Across America by George Cadogan Morgan and Richard Price Morgan (UWP, 2012).
Romantic Forgeries
Issues of authenticity and ownership, and the weight attached to such ‘national’ traditions, are central to my work on the poet, stonemason and ‘inventor of traditions’ Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) 1747–1826.
My monograph, The Truth Against the World (UWP, 2007), compares Iolo’s work with that of other supposed literary ‘forgers’ of the period, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton and the Breton Hersart de La Villemarqué. I have also written on the Breton ballad tradition, and on La Villemarqué’s visit to Wales in 1838.
Creative writing
I have published two collections of short stories: The Breathing (Planet, 2008) and All the Souls (Seren, 2013). A novel, Star-Shot, came out with Seren in 2015.