Professor Patrick Sims-Williams

Professor Sims-Williams recently completed a book on Irish influence on medieval Welsh literature which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He also does research on the early Celtic languages, including Old Irish, Old and Middle Welsh, and the ancient Continental Celtic languages. He recently published a two-volume study of Roman inscriptions containing Celtic personal names, jointly with Marilynne E. Raybould (2007, 2009),  and he is currently writing the linguistic commentary for the third and final volume of A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales (2007- ). In 2009 he delivered the John V. Kelleher Lecture in Harvard University on ‘How our understanding of early Irish literature has progressed’. He has edited Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies since 1981. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and directs the Academy’s research project on the Development of the Welsh Language (Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg).

Publications

'Comparing the Distribution of Celtic Personal Names with that of Celtic Place-Names' in Celtic and Other Languages in Ancient Europe, ed.Juan Luis Garcia Alonso (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2008) pp. 29-51.

'Kel'tomanija i Ket'toskepticizm' Neprikosnovennyj zapas [Moscow] 57,
pp.179-91.

'The Problem of Spirantization and Nasalization in Brittonic Celtic'  in

Evidence and Counter-Evidence: Essays in Honour of Frederik Kortlandt, I, Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics ed. Alexander Lubolsky, Jos Sachaaeden and Jeroen Wiedenhof, Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics, 32 (Amsterdam and New York Rodopi, 2008) pp. 509-25.

'Early Inscriptions and their Language' and 'Later Inscriptions and the Use of Languages' in Hidden Histories: Discovering the Heritage of Wales, ed. Peter Wakelin and Ralph A Griffiths (Aberystwyth: Royal Commission of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, 2008) pp. 102-3 & 116-7.

'Arysgrifau Cynnar a'u Hiaith' and 'Arysgrifau Diweddarach a'r Ieithoedd Arnynt' in Trysorau Cudd: Darganfod Treftradaeth Cymru ed. Peter Wakelin and Ralph A Griffiths (Aberystwyth: Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru, 2008) pp. 102-3 & 116 - 7.

The Geography of Celtic Personal Names in the Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007), iv + 210 pp. (with Marilynne E. Raybould).

A Corpus of Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire Containing Celtic Personal Names (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007), ix + 283 pp. (with Marilynne E. Raybould).

‘Common Celtic, Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic’, Gaulois et Celtique Continental, gol. Pierre-Yves Lambert & Georges-Jean Pinault (Geneva: Droz, 2007), pp. 309-54.

Studies on Celtic Languages before the Year 1000, (Aberystwyth: CMCS, 2007), ix + 253 pp.

The Iron House in Ireland, H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures, 16 (Cambridge, 2006), 31pp.

Ancient Celtic Place-Names in Europe and Asia Minor, Publications of the Philological Society, 39 (Oxford, 2006), xiii + 406tt., 69 maps.

‘Person-Switching in Celtic Panegyric: Figure or Fault?’, CSANA Year-Book, 3/4 (2005), 315-26.

‘Medieval Irish Literary Theory and Criticism: 1. Poetic Theory’, The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, II, The Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis & Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 291-301 & 754-58.

‘A Recension of Boniface’s Letter to Eadburg about the Monk of Wenlock’s Vision’, Latin Learning and English Lore, I, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe & Andy Orchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), pp. 194-214.

New Approaches to Celtic Place-Names in Ptolemy’s Geography, ed. Javier de Hoz, Eugenio R. Luján, & Patrick Sims-Williams (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2005), 287pp.