Paul Russell

Paul Russell

 

Paul Russell

  • Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor in Residence of Celtic Languages and Literatures
  • office: Warren House 204
  • prussell@fas.harvard.edu

Paul Russell, the Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor in Residence of Celtic Languages and Literatures, was educated at the University of Oxford and holds degrees in Classics, Comparative Philology and Linguistics, and a DPhil in Celtic. He was previously Professor of Celtic in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the linguistics and philology of the Celtic languages; and medieval Welsh and Irish literature, with a particular focus on their manuscript contexts.  Another aspect of his research concerns Latin texts from the Celtic-speaking world, such as the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales, and texts translated from Latin into the vernacular Celtic languages; and out of this has developed a line of research in fields where the texts move between Latin and Celtic languages, such as medieval Welsh law and hagiography. He teaches courses in Medieval Welsh language and literature, the Celtic origins of King Arthur, and the manuscript cultures of the Celtic-speaking world.  

 

Selected recent publications: 

Gerald of Wales, On the Deeds of Gerald (De gestis Giraldi), ed. and trans. (with Jacob Currie and Thomas Charles-Edwards), Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 2023). 

Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales (Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 2017).  

Vita Griffini filii Conani. The Medieval Latin Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005).  

‘Melioratum … et emendatum: rewriting, polishing, and textual fluidity among twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin and Welsh writers in Britain’, in Textual Traditions and Medieval Literary Culture: Essays in Honour of Siân Echard, ed. William Green, Daniel Helbert, and Noëlle Phillips (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2025), pp. 25–41. 

‘Facing different ways: the onomastics of people in medieval Brittany’, in Multi-disciplinary approaches to medieval Brittany, 450–1200: Connections and Disconnections, ed. Caroline Brett, Paul Russell, and Fiona Edmonds, TCNE 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp. 311–58. 

‘Gerald of Wales and the rewriting of saints’ lives: the hagiographical fragments in London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius E. vii’, Journal of Medieval Latin, 32 (2022), 209–39. 

‘Borrowing and hiring in medieval Wales and Ireland’, in Cyfarwydd Mewn Cyfraith: Studies in Honour of Morfydd E. Owen, ed. Sara Elin Roberts, Simon Rodway, and A. Falileyev, The Welsh Legal History Society 17 (Bangor, 2022), pp. 142–67. 

‘Translating saints: the Latin and Welsh versions  of the Life of St David’, in Seintiau Cymru, Sancti Cambrenses: Astudiaethau ar Seintiau Cymru/Studies in the Saints of Wales, ed. David Parsons and Paul Russell (Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd, 2022), pp. 101–18. 

 ‘Rethinking the Latin and Old Welsh glossing in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153 (Martianus Capella)’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies 6.1 (2022), 102–42. 

‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s classical and biblical inheritance’, in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Joshua Byron Smith and Georgia Henley (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 67–104. 

‘Brenhin uu. Reading the death of kings in Culhwch ac Olwen’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 3.1 (2019), 55–64. 

‘“Go and look in the Latin books”: Latin and the vernacular in medieval Wales’, in Latin in Medieval Britain, ed. Richard Ashdowne and Carolinne White, Proceedings of the British Academy 206 (London: OUP, 2017), 213–46. 

 ‘Priuilegium Sancti Teliaui and Breint Teilo’, Studia Celtica 50 (2016), 41–68.  

 ‘Teaching between the lines: grammar and grammatica in the classroom in Early Medieval Wales’, in Grammatica, Gramadach, Gramadeg: Vernacular Grammar and Grammarians in Medieval Ireland and Wales, ed. Deborah Hayden and Paul Russell (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2016), pp. 133–48.