Alumni

Celeste completed her PHD in Celtic in 2023. She earned a BA in Medieval Studies and History from Smith College in 2013, an MLitt in Medieval Studies from the University of St Andrews in 2014, and an MA in Medieval Welsh Literature from Aberystwyth University in 2016. At St Andrews, she wrote a dissertation examining how Welsh national/ethnic identity was reflected in the Cambro-Latin saints’ Lives of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. At Aberystwyth, she wrote on the legacy of Magnus Maximus/Maxen Wledig (and, more generally, Rome) in medieval Wales. Her primary research interests are ethnic and national identity in medieval Britain and how stories, legends, and traditions can affect that identity and influence the surrounding political culture. Email: clandrews@g.harvard.edu

Myrzinn finished her PHD in 2024. Before coming to Harvard Myrzinn began an MPhil in Medieval Celtic languages and has earned an Mphil in Celtic Studies from the University of Western Brittany (Brest) in 2017, as well as a BA in Breton and Celtic from the University of Rennes II, taught through the medium of Breton, in 2014, which also included a year abroad at the NUI Galway. Her current research interests are in Old and Middle Breton.

Kassandra Conley completed her PhD in the Celtic department in May 2014. Before coming to Harvard, she received a BA in English and History from Centre College and an MA in English from the University of Georgia. She has presented papers on a variety of topics, including uses of the Alexander Romance in bardic poetry, parody in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy, and giants in sixteenth century Welsh historiography. Her current research interests include pseudo-history, ethnography and geography, late medieval and early modern British mulitlingualism, and postcolonial theory. Her dissertation, tentatively titled "Experiencing Wonder in Wales, 1300-1600," considers middle Welsh representations of the marvelous as well as how these representations found new political uses during the Tudor era after the establishment of the Acts of Union. In her increasingly infrequent spare time, she enjoys traveling, reading bad Welsh language pulp fiction, and exploring Boston.

Deborah completed her Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures in 2019. In 2009 she received a BA from the University of Toronto with a specialization in English literature and a major in Celtic Studies. She remained in Toronto to earn an MA through the Centre for Medieval Studies the following year working with both Celtic and Old French literature and studying Medieval Latin intensively. Although interested in the literary and manuscript culture of twelfth and thirteenth century Wales and how it relates to the thriving exchange of literary ideas across Britain and Europe as a whole, she focuses mostly on Middle Welsh and Old French poetry of the courtly tradition. Most recently she presented a paper entitled "Ystorya Adaf ac Efa Wreic and the Apocryphal Narratives of the White Book of Rhydderch" at the 31st Harvard Celtic Colloquium.

Matthew Holmberg received his Ph.D. from the department in the Spring of 2017. His dissertation was entitled "Towards a Relative Chronology of the Milesian Genealogical Scheme." His interest in Celtic Studies began at University of California–Berkeley where he earned his B.A. with Honors in 2008. In 2010 he completed NUI–Maynooth's taught M.A. program in Early and Medieval Irish. Currently, Matthew is teaching Irish at Boston College and Harvard while continuing his research into the medieval Irish genealogies.

Aled graduated from the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures in May 2011. His PhD thesis was a study of Welsh political prophecy (darogan) from both empirical-philological and literary theoretical perspectives. This became his 2013 monograph, Darogan: Prophecy, lament and absent heroes in medieval Welsh literature (Cardiff: UWP), with ideas further developed in subsequent articles.

In 2024 he became Head of the School of Welsh at Bangor University, where he is Reader in Medieval Literature.

Fields of Interest: medieval Welsh-language and Irish-language literature (prose and poetry); cultures and history of Wales and Ireland (medieval and modern); medieval prophetics and apocalyptics; poetics and the Welsh and Irish strict metres; literary theory; philosophy of language; sociolinguistics, minority languages and language rights, bilingualism / multilingualism; translation. 

He has published translations and co-translations of poetry and prose into Welsh from Polish, Irish, English, Galician and Italian.

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/staff/sacl/aled-llion-jones-081756/en 

Email: aled.llion@bangor.ac.uk

Edyta Lehmann completed her PhD in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures in 2012 after defending her dissertation, "The Power of Words: Female Speech as a Narrative Force in Irish Tales across Centuries." Before coming to Harvard, Edyta received an MA in Polish Philology from the University of Wroclaw, Poland and an MA in English from the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include Modern Irish, contemporary poetry in Irish, postcolonial theory and film. She has presented and published on a variety of topics, often focusing on the portrayal and function of female characters in Irish texts. While at Harvard, she taught courses on Modern Irish and Irish sagas, as well as folklore and mythology, comparative literature, and Polish film. She is engaged in initiatives supporting multilingual learning and inclusive education.

 Oisin received his PHD In Celtic Studies in the Spring of 2025. Before coming to Harvard, he received his B.A. in Early and Modern Irish from Trinity College Dublin. During his undergraduate degree, he spent a year in Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, studying Celtic Studies and Indo-European historical linguistics, where he developed a keen interest in comparative philology. His current research interests include the development of the Early Irish verbal system, comparative Indo-European and Celtic linguistics, Modern Irish translation and the future of the Gaelic languages in the modern era. Email: oisinomuirthile@g.harvard.edu

Shannon received her PHD in Celtic in 2024. Shannon graduated from Aberystwyth University in 2017 with a BA in Celtic Studies taught through the medium of Welsh, learning Welsh from beginner to fluent and gaining a foundation in Middle Welsh, Irish and Old Irish. During her undergraduate degree, Shannon also spent a semester abroad in Trinity College Dublin studying Early Irish. Learning Scottish Gaelic to fluency during her AM in Celtic Literatures and Languages at Harvard, (completed in 2019), Shannon’s dissertation explores British identity in eighteenth-century Welsh- and Scottish Gaelic-language poetry. Interested in researching a broad range of time periods, Shannon has also published on medieval Welsh poetry and prose, Scottish Gaelic poetry from the eighteenth century and Welsh poetry from the eighteenth century. Current additional research projects include the work of contemporary author Angharad Price, twelfth-century poet Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, and music in the medieval prose tales, The Mabinogi. Shannon is also engaged in writing a textbook for the Welsh courses at Harvard and a translation of Jerry Hunter’s novel, Safana.

Email: Shannon_parker@g.harvard.edu

Natasha completed a PhD in Celtic Languages and Literatures with a secondary concentration in Comparative Literature in spring 2015. Her dissertation traced the historical development of the Fenian narrative tradition—i.e. the vast body of story and song, some of it well over a millennium old, about the Gaelic hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his roving warrior band. The dissertation was supplemented by a catalogue of modern Fenian folklore containing metadata for over 3,300 folklore items. 

In a recent project, she completed the transcription and translation used to subtitle the re-discovered film, Oidhche Sheanchais, directed by Robert Flaherty and restored by the Harvard Film Archive (2015 [1935]).  She joined the faculty of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard as Assistant Professor in autumn 2015.

Visit her website for more information: http://scholar.harvard.edu/natashasumner  Email: nsumner@fas.harvard.edu

Sarah Zeiser received her PhD in Celtic Languages & Literatures with a secondary in Medieval Studies in 2012. She holds a BA in Medieval Studies from Smith College. While earning her PhD, Sarah was a Graduate Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London, as well as a Frank Knox Memorial Traveling Fellow. Her doctoral dissertation “Latinity, Manuscripts, and the Rhetoric of Conquest in Late-Eleventh-Century Wales” explores the complex interactions among language, text, and political context in Wales during the decades surrounding the Norman Conquest of England. After three years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department, Sarah is now an Associate of the Department and Project Manager and Special Assistant to the Dean in the Division of Arts & Humanities at Harvard.