Rebecca Thomas

I am a Lecturer in Medieval History at Cardiff University, specializing in the history, culture, and literature of medieval Wales. My research focuses especially on the construction of Welsh identity in medieval texts, and my monograph on this subject, History and Identity in Early Medieval Wales, was published by Boydell & Brewer in 2022. This volume investigates the characteristics used as markers of identity in ninth- and tenth-century Latin and vernacular texts, including names, territory, language, and origin legends. Intertextuality is a key theme, and I explore the influence of texts from other parts of Britain and Europe on Welsh strategies of identity construction. I am also interested in political and cultural connections between Wales and the wider world in the Middle Ages. My research in this area includes an investigation of royal Welsh pilgrimage to Rome in the ninth and tenth centuries, and discussion of the Irish Sea connections of the Welsh king Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137). I am currently examining the depiction of eleventh-century Anglo-Welsh relations in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

I also write creatively and my Welsh medieval historical novel for young adults, Dan Gysgod y Frenhines (In the Queen's Shadow), was published by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch in July 2022. My personal essay on landscape and names in south Wales, 'Cribo'r Dragon's Back', won the inaugural O'r Pedwar Gwynt Essay Prize in 2021. In 2022 I was appointed as Welsh Writer in Residence for Bannau Brycheiniog National Park.