Introduction to the Department

Since the founding of the College in Aberystwyth in 1872, the Department of Welsh has played a leading part in Welsh learning and culture, including literature and other media, education, politics and journalism. Many notable Welsh scholars and authors have taught and studied here. Ours is the largest Welsh Department in Wales, with 10 full-time academic staff members who between them teach over the whole range of Celtic languages and literatures. Most staff and students concentrate on Welsh, but there are also BA degrees in Irish Language and Literature (available through Welsh or English), in Celtic Studies, and in Welsh and the Celtic Languages.

We are proud of our unrivalled standards in research and teaching. The Department was awarded the highest possible grade (5*A) in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, and was ranked second highest of Britain’s Celtic departments after Cambridge in the 2008 RAE, as well as ‘Excellent’ in the latest Teaching Quality Assessment. The annual university league tables, based on a number of factors, including employment after graduation and student satisfaction, have for many years put the Department at or near the top of all Celtic departments in the United Kingdom.

The Department is situated in the atmospheric Old College building by the sea, a brisk ten-minute walk away from the main campus on Pen-glais Hill and the National Library of Wales with its unrivalled collections of manuscripts, books and journals. Welsh is the everyday language of the Department and of much of the region and learners are given every possible encouragement to use the language as much as they can.

The Welsh Department is renowned for its international reputation in research, but is also noted for being a friendly and unstuffy place to study. We welcome undergraduates and postgraduates from all over Wales and, indeed, from all over the world. We have students from Ireland, Finland, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, England, the USA, Canada, and Brittany, and we collaborate with universities in Austria, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and elsewhere. Through the Erasmus exchange-scheme, students can study at universities in Ireland, Brittany and elsewhere in Europe.