Principal Investigator: Dr Deborah Hayden
deborah.hayden@mu.ie
Deborah Hayden is Associate Professor in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University. Her research interests centre on medieval Irish, Latin and Welsh language, literature and textual culture, in particular the history of linguistic thought and education in classical and medieval tradition, premodern Irish medical writing and its wider European context, early Irish lexicography, Irish and Welsh legal sources, and translation literature. She is currently Lead Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Language & History.
Since 2021 she has also been Co-Investigator of the IRC/AHRC-funded UK-Ireland Digital Humanities projects OG(H)AM: Harnessing Digital Technologies to Transform Understanding of Ogham Writing, from the 4th Century to the 21st and Ogham Palaeography+ (Opal+), as part of which she is researching the use of ogam in manuscript sources from the medieval to modern periods.
She has recently been involved in two other major projects that have now concluded: from 2020-2021 she was Co-Investigator of the IRC/AHRC-funded networking project Developing a Digital Framework for the Medieval Gaelic World, and from 2018–2021 she was Principal Investigator for the project Medieval Irish Medicine in its North-western European Context: A Case Study of Two Unpublished Texts (MIMNEC), funded by a Starting Laureate Award from the Irish Research Council.
Postdoctoral Researcher: Dr Siobhán Barrett
siobhan.barrett@mu.ie
Siobhán Barrett was awarded a PhD from the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University in 2017. She has been working on medical texts for the last five years, firstly as a research assistant on the IRC Laureate project Medieval Irish Medicine in its North-western European Context (MIMNEC), and then as a Irish Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow conducting research on medieval Irish medical glossaries.
Technical Support and Website Development: Cathal Peelo
Chief Technical Officer: Stavros Angelis
PhD Student: Dylan Bailey
dylan.bailey.2023@mumail.ie
Dylan Bailey read History at the University of East Anglia for his undergraduate degree, focusing on the history of medieval Europe and carrying out an optional dissertation on the evidence for religious doubt in medieval miracle collections. This inspired him to focus on medieval social history, particularly considering the experience of minorities and outsiders. Around this time, he developed an interest in the history of Ireland, which led him to doing a Master’s in Ancient Cultures at the University of Glasgow. This Master’s allowed him to gain wider insight into how myths and legends reflect their original societies, including those from ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval Ireland. In his final semester, he audited a course in Early Gaelic Literature to prepare him for his dissertation, where he compared the physical depictions of heroism between the Iliad and the Middle Gaelic Finn Cycle. This research provided some fascinating insights into the depiction and experience of disabled people in medieval Gaelic society, an area he plans to explore further at PhD level.
Project Affiliates
Dr Sharon Arbuthnot
Sharon Arbuthnot is based at the University of Cambridge and has recently returned to the electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) project, on which she was employed as a researcher and editor between 2009 and 2020. In the intervening years, she worked as a lexicographer and, subsequently, as Director of Faclair na Gàidhlig, the historical dictionary of Scottish Gaelic. She has published recently on vocabulary specific to the domains of technology, sex, wildlife and the supernatural but has a particular interest in how a new register for the translation and composition of medical knowledge was developed in the late medieval Gaelic world and how linguistic strategies pursued in Gaelic medical texts compare with those in evidence in other European vernaculars. Over the past few years, she has been collecting material which she hopes will lead eventually to the compilation of a dedicated dictionary of Gaelic medical terminology from around the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries.
Benedetta D’Antuono
benedetta.dantuono.2022@mumail.ie
Benedetta D’Antuono completed a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures (English and French) at the University of Milan (2020) and the University of Warwick (Erasmus+). She subsequently obtained an MA in Philology and Editing at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2022) and Maynooth University (Visiting Student), where she attended the MA in Medieval Irish Studies. During her academic path, she specialised in the Celtic and Germanic traditions, writing an MA thesis on the late-medieval Irish translation of the Middle English romance Guy of Warwick (Beathadh Sir Gui o Bharbhuic) (TCD MS 1298). In her current doctoral studies at Maynooth University, she is expanding the analysis of the miscellaneous TCD MS 1298, written by the prolific 15th-century translator Uilliam Mac an Leagha, by addressing selected texts: the late-medieval Irish translations Stair Ercuil ocus a Bás, Beathadh Sir Gui o Bharbhuic, Bethadh Bibuis o Hamtuir, Stair Fortibrais and the Irish romantic tale Stair Nuadat Find Femin. By adopting the method of ‘Descriptive Translation Studies’, she intends to shed new light on the social, cultural, and historical factors governing the translation process and on the intertextual connections between the translated works and the native tale. Her research interests encompass medieval Irish, English, Old Norse, French, and Latin language and literature, translation literature, textual criticism, manuscript studies, and digital editing.
Dr Ranke De Vries
Ranke de Vries (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Celtic Studies at St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Her research area is medieval Celtic languages and literatures. She leads the Medicine in Medieval Irish Saga Texts Project, which examines the nature of medical knowledge in Ireland prior to the appearance of the earliest medical manuscripts. The project primarily aims to determine to what extent continental European and Arabic medical thought is present in medieval Irish saga literature. The secondary aim of the project is to demonstrate the value in reading medieval Irish texts from a medical perspective, an approach that is not currently widely adopted.