Matthew Siôn Lampitt

Entitled 'Networking the March: The Literature of the Welsh Marches, c. 1180–c. 1410', my thesis draws on recent social theories of the network to formulate a new account of the literary culture of the medieval Welsh Marches. My investigation centres on three case-study locales: Hereford, c. 1180–c. 1210; Ludlow, c. 1310–c. 1350; Cwm Tawe, c. 1380–c. 1410. I argue that networks offer a more ethical and intellectually rigorous model for conceptualising medieval political and cultural geography, one that might restore to erstwhile "peripheral" regions a level of political and cultural agency.  

Other areas of interest include: Romance and Celtic philology; the troubadours, trobairitz, and literary culture of medieval southern France; literary history; critical theory (especialy Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, and posthumanist).

I graduated top of my class list at the University of Cambridge with a starred first class in Modern and Medieval Languages (French and German) (2013), and gained a distinction in an MA in French Literature and Culture at KCL, funded by the KCL Sévigné studentship (2014). I then taught as a British Council English-Language Assistant in Nîmes, before beginning my PhD at KCL in 2015, funded by a LAHP-AHRC Modern Languages Research Studentship.