David M. Email & Phone Number

I am currently undertaking work towards a PhD in Medieval History and Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University, one of the premier universities for Celtic Studies in the world. My doctoral thesis is on the way ‘lord’-words, of which there are forty-four, are used in the corpus of the Beirdd y Tywysogion (Poets of the Princes), in the period of 1100-1300. However, I also survey the uses of these words in the whole of Welsh poetry from 550-1100 and 1300-1600 for reasons of comparison. This work assesses in what way these words were conceived, their contexts, their connotations, and a putative hierarchy for them, as they are not mostly synonyms for the word arglwydd or ‘lord’, which for lack of study how they were glossed in previous editions of this poetry. I also analyse following this the way the Poets of the Princes used these words in a propagandistic manner to further disseminate the claims of their patrons. As praise-poetry, these works are naturally ‘propagandistic’ to some extent, but my thesis furthers the understanding that the praise-poets were very acutely politically aware and acted as real and effacious conduits by which an ambitious lord may seek to legitimise or claim a greater suzerainty. Statistical analysis is carried out as far as is possible to show that certain rulers may have actively sought to cultivate a certain image of themselves by using specific titles.I hold a great interest in all aspects of early medieval culture, not limited to poetry, legendary history, saints’ lives, and other non-traditional sources for the piecing together of early medieval society and history. Special interests of mine are the ways in which the Welsh interpreted the ‘Old North’ and the ‘Age of Saints’, the way in which power was expressed in early medieval Europe, and the transformation of the Roman world into the early medieval kingdoms of the former Empire and beyond. As much of the written sources for this period in these contexts come from a later period, I am also fascinated with the ways the Welsh, Irish, and Anglo-Saxons interpreted and reinterpreted the early Middle Ages.