Mary-Ann Constantine took her first degree in English Literature at Clare College, Cambridge (1988–91), and stayed on to do a Ph.D in Breton folklore. She moved to Aberystwyth in 1995 and held a succession of Research Fellowships in the Welsh Department, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. During this period she taught various topics in Welsh and Celtic Studies, and continued her work on the ballad tradition in Brittany. She joined the Iolo Morganwg project|  as leader in March 2002.

Mary-Ann’s main interest is in the literature and the literary lives of the Romantic period, and especially in the interactions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms, and between oral and written sources. Her work in the past has looked at the transformation of folk material, such as the oral ballads of Brittany, by collectors and editors for a literate (and Romantic) public. The vexed issues of authenticity and ownership, and the weight attached to such ‘national’ traditions, are also central to her work on Iolo Morganwg. Her most recent book is a detailed comparison of Iolo with other supposed literary ‘forgers’ of the period, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton and the Breton Hersart de La Villemarqué.

Mary-Ann was recently awarded an AHRC research grant to establish a new four-year project on ‘Wales and the French Revolution’| at the Centre, which commenced in January 2009.

The Breathing , a collection of short stories by Mary-Ann Constantine, was published by Planet in November 2008. 

Selected Publications:

Welsh Literary History and the Making of “The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales”’, in Editing the Nation’s Memory: Textual Scholarship and Nation-Building in Nineteenth- Century Europe ,eds. Dirk Van Hulle and Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam, 2008), pp. 109–28.

The Truth Against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery (Cardiff, 2007).

‘“Viewing Most Things Thro’ False Mediums”’: Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826) and English Perceptions of Wales’, in Romanticism’s Debatable Lands , eds. Claire Lamont and Michael Rossington (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 27–38.

‘“A Subject of Conversation”: Iolo Morganwg, Hannah More and Ann Yearsley’, in Wales and the Romantic Imagination , eds. Damian Walford Davies and Lynda Pratt (Cardiff, 2007), pp. 65–85.

‘Chasing Fragments: Iolo, Ritson and Robin Hood’, in Bearers of Song: Essays in honour of Phyllis Kinney and Meredydd Evans / Cynheiliaid y Gân: Ysgrifau i anrhydeddu Phyllis Kinney a Meredydd Evans , eds. Sally Harper and Wyn Thomas (Cardiff, 2007), pp. 51–7.

‘“This wildernessed business of publication”: The making of Poems, Lyric and Pastoral (1794)’, in Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg , ed. Geraint H. Jenkins (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 123–45.

‘Celtic Literatures’, in The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Volume 4 (1790–1900) , eds. Peter France and Kenneth Haynes (Oxford, 2006), pp. 294–307.

‘Songs and Stones: Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826), Mason and Bard’, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation , 47, numbers 2/3 (Summer/Fall 2006), 233–51.

‘Iolo Morganwg, Chatterton and Bristol’, in From Gothic to Romantic: Chatterton’s Bristol , ed. Alistair Heys (Bristol, 2005), pp. 104–15.

‘Iolo Morganwg, Coleridge, and the Bristol Lectures, 1795’, Notes & Queries (March, 2005), 42–4.

[with Jon Cannon] ‘A Welsh Bard in Wiltshire: Iolo Morganwg, Silbury and the Sarsens’, Wiltshire Studies , 97 (2004), 78–88.

‘Neither flesh nor fowl: Merlin as bird-man in Breton folk tradition’, Arthurian Literature , XXI (2004), ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, 95–114.

[with Gerald Porter] Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song: from the Blues to the Baltic . British Academy Monographs Series (Oxford, 2003).

"Combustible Matter": Iolo Morganwg and the Bristol Volcano ( Aberystwyth, 2003).

‘Saints Behaving Badly: Sanctity and Transgression in Breton Popular Tradition’, in Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults , ed. Jane Cartwright (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 198–215.

‘The Wreck of the Royal Charter: Welsh and English Ballads’, in Ballads in Wales / Baledi yng Nghymru , ed. Mary-Ann Constantine, FLS Books (London, 1999), pp. 65–85.

‘Ballads Crossing Borders: La Villemarqué and the Breton Lenore’, in Translation & Literature , volume 8, part 2 (1999), 197–216.

Breton Ballads (Aberystwyth, 1996) [Katharine Briggs Award, 1996].

‘Prophecy and Pastiche in the Breton ballads: Groac’h Ahès and Gwenc’hlan’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies , 30 (Winter, 1995), 87–121.