Completed Projects

• The Poets of the Princes
  The Centre’s first project was an ambitious scheme to edit all the surviving poetry of the Poets of the Princes, who sang between c. 1100 and the Edwardian Conquest of 1282/3 . . .
• The Social History of the Welsh Language
  The second major research project of the Centre, the Social History of the Welsh Language from the first Act of Union in 1536 to the present, was completed in 2001. Its aim was to explain how and why Welsh was replaced to a considerable degree in the modern period by the English language . .
• The Poets of the Nobility
  The Poets of the Nobility Project was the Centre’s third project. Building on the success of its internationally-acclaimed series of volumes on The Poets of the Princes, the Centre regularly published attractive and scholarly volumes on some of the finest poetry composed in the period between the Edwardian Conquest of 1282/3 and the death of Tudur Aled in 1526 . . .
• The Visual Culture of Wales
  The Visual Culture of Wales Research Project was established at the Centre in 1994, with the intention of researching, writing and publishing a three-volume history of the visual culture of Wales from the Celtic Christian period to the mid-twentieth century . . . 
• The Celtic Languages and Cultural Identity
  Since 1998 an international team of full-time researchers led by Professor John T. Koch has striven to research and to reveal in full detail the connections between the story of the Celtic languages and the cultural history of Europe, tracing the evidence of Celtic speech and the cultures of its speakers from the pre-Roman Iron Age to today . . . 
• Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales
  Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826), was a prime force behind the cultural revival that saw the birth of modern Wales. Over the last five years a team of full-time researchers has been working through his rich and chaotic archive, held at the National Library of Wales . . .
• The Poetry of Guto'r Glyn

  From the fifteenth century to the present day Guto'r Glyn (1435 - 1493) has been acknowledged as one of the greatest poets - if not greatest - to sing in the Welsh praise-poetry tradition, a tradition which reaches back to the sixth century . . . An on-line electronic edition, published in 2012, includes an English translation of the poems and notes on key issues of interest . . .

• Ancient Britain and the Atlantic Zone

  The research initiative recognizes a potential paradigm shift in Celtic studies. Arguments based in archaeology and genetics have recently been put forward in favour of Celtic origins in the Atlantic Bronze Age rather than the central European territories of the early Hallstatt and La Tene archaeological cultures of the Iron Age . . .
• Wales and the French Revolution                                                                        The French Revolution of 1789 was perhaps the defining event of the Romantic period in Europe . . . How did the events in Europe and the British reaction to them come to be known and felt in places like Carmarthen, Bangor or Milford Haven? In what ways did Welsh responses differ from those in Scotland, Ireland or London? This project aimed to explore these questions through a series of edited texts . . .

• Stained Glass in Wales                                                                      Stained glass windows can be found in great numbers across the whole of the country, present in most communities, mainly in churches and some chapels . . .  Building on the AHRC Imaging the Bible Project, run in collaboration with the University of Wales, Lampeter, an online database of stained glass in Wales has been completed.

• Snows of Yesteryear: narrating extreme weather                                                      This project, funded by the AHRC, investigated how to reveal and relate past experiences, both historical and more recent, as ways of understanding and coping with phenomena increasingly regarded as markers of climate change. It explored the ways that extreme weather events are remembered and mythologised by the people of Wales, in order to interpret what is ultimately learned from them as both warning and opportunity.