Professor Ann Parry Owen BA, PhD, FLSW

Professor (Personal Chair) / Senior Editor of the University of Wales Dictionary

Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS)

Role in the University

Professor (Personal Chair) / Senior Editor of the University of Wales Dictionary

Background

Professor Ann Parry Owen has been a member of the Centre’s staff since 1 October 1985, when the Centre was opened as part of the University of Wales. She was a Research Fellow on the ‘Poets of the Princes’ project (1985–93), collaborating with Dr Nerys Ann Jones on the work of the great twelfth-century poet Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr. In 1993 she was appointed leader of the ‘Poets of the Nobility’ project, which would produce 44 volumes of poetry over twenty years, as a result of fruitful collaboration between the Centre and staff from the Welsh departments of the universities.

In 2007 she was awarded a grant of nearly £900K by the AHRC to lead a team of researchers to re-edit the work of the important 15th-century poet, Guto’r Glyn. The project ran between 2008 and 2013 and its main output was the fully bilingual and innovative Guto’r Glyn Website. Between 2015 and 2017 Professor Parry Owen was Co-Investigator on the ‘Cult of Saints in Wales’ project, and she re-edited the three major twelfth-century poems for the saints Dewi, Cadfan and Tysilio. She is now Co-Investigator on the UWTSD ‘Sacred Landscapes of the Medieval Monasteries’ project.

Since 2017 Professor Parry Owen has been Senior Editor on the University of Wales Dictionary and is particularly interested in the early history of words and the vocabulary of the poets. She has recently been researching a vast body of contemporary words recorded by the Flintshire scribe John Jones of Gellilyfdy in 1632–4 when he was incarcerated in the Fleet prison in London as a debtor.

She is the Chief Editor of Studia Celtica and a member of the Editorial Board of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) Library of Medieval Welsh Literature.

Academic Interests

In addition to the above, Professor Parry Owen teaches the ‘Medieval Welsh Praise Poetry’ module on the BA Celtic Studies course and supervises postgraduate research.

Research Interests

Medieval Welsh poetry (from the 12th to the 15th century)
Guto’r Glyn
Welsh language and grammar
John Jones, Gellilyfdy, and his lexical work
Manuscripts and scribes

Expertise

Welsh language and grammar
Medieval Welsh poetry
Creating digital editions and using technology for research
Place-names
Historical lexicography
Manuscripts and palaeography

Enterprise, Commercial, and Consultancy Activities

Member of the Welsh Language Commissioner’s Place-name Standardization Panel

Publications

‘A–Z Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: 100 mlynedd mewn 30 gair’, BBC Cymru Fyw, 20 September 2021

‘Enwau lleoedd a Beirdd y Tywysogion’, in Gareth A. Bevan, G. Angharad Fychan, Hywel Wyn Owen and Ann Parry Owen (eds.), Ar Drywydd Enwau Lleoedd: Casgliad o Ysgrifau i Anrhydeddu’r Athro Gwynedd O. Pierce ar ei Ben Blwydd yn Gant Oed / A Collection of Essays to Honour Professor Gwynedd O. Pierce on his Hundredth Birthday (Tal-y-bont: Y Lolfa, 2021)

‘Index of place-names in medieval Welsh poetry’, geiriadura.cymru (February 2021)

‘Canu i Ddewi’ by Gwynfardd Brycheiniog, ‘The Cult of Saints in Wales’ website (November 2020)

‘Canu Tysilio’ by Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, ‘The Cult of Saints in Wales’ website (September 2019)

‘Canu i Gadfan’ by Llywelyn Fardd, ‘The Cult of Saints in Wales’ website (October 2018)

Senior Editor, GPC Online and GPC App (University of Wales Dictionary) (2017–)

Plu porffor a chlog o fwng ceiliog: Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr a Guto’r Glyn, J. E. Caerwyn Williams and Mrs Gwen Williams Memorial Lecture 2015 (Aberystwyth, 2017)

Articles on ‘The Hendregadredd Manuscript’, ‘The Gogynfeirdd’ and ‘Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr’, in Sian Echard, Robert Rouse, Jacqueline A. Fay, Helen Fulton and Geoff Rector (eds.), The Encyclopedia of British Literature (Hoboken, New Jersey, 2017; available through the ‘Wiley Online Library’)

‘Gramadeg Gwysanau: a fragment of a fourteenth-century Welsh bardic grammar’, in Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell (eds.), Grammatica, Gramadach and Gramadeg: Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medieval Ireland and Wales (Oxford, 2016), pp. 181–20

Articles on ‘Sangiad’, ‘Marwnad’ and ‘Noddwr’, in Robert Rhys and Heather Williams (eds.), Esboniadur Beirniadaeth a Theori Lenyddol y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol: https://www.porth.ac.uk (2016)

‘ “An audacious man of beautiful words”: Ieuan Gethin (c.1390–c.1470)’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 34 (2014), 1–34

Gwaith Ieuan Gethin (Aberystwyth, 2013)

‘Golygiadau electronig: Gwefan Guto’r Glyn’, Tu Chwith (Spring 2013), 40–8

Editions of poems 103–18 by Guto’r Glyn (see www.gutorglyn.net) and General Editor of the website (2012)

‘Cywydd Gofyn Cloc gan Ddafydd ab Owain o Fargam ar ran Morys o Ardal y Fenni’, Llên Cymru, 35 (2012), 3–18

with William Linnard, ‘Horological requests in early Welsh poems’, Antiquarian Horology, 33 (September 2012), 631–6

‘Gramadeg Gwysanau (Archifdy Sir y Fflint, D/GW 2082)’, Llên Cymru, 33 (2010), 1–31

Additional Information

Member of the Welsh Place-Name Society (and editor of its twice-yearly Bulletin)
Member of the Editorial Board of A Thousand Years of Cornish, 800–1800
Member of the British Academy’s Development of the Welsh Language Committee
Gave the annual John V. Kelleher Lecture at Harvard University in 2014
Awarded a grant of nearly 900K for the Guto’r Glyn Project, 2008–13
Awarded a grant from the Neil Ker Memorial Fund, 2020, for work on Daniel Huws’s A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes (2021)