Dr Fiona Edmonds

Director of Studies in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic

Lecturer in Celtic History

t: (01223) 767315

e: fle20@cam.ac.uk

Main Publications:

Selected Publications

Personal names and the cult of Patrick in eleventh-century Strathclyde and Northumbria, pp41–65 in Saints’ cults in the Celtic world (Steve Boardman, John Reuben Davies & Eila Williamson, eds)

(Woodbridge, 2009)

Barrier or unifying feature? Defining the nature of early medieval water transport in the northwest, pp 21–36 in Water transport and canal-building in medieval England (J Blair, ed)

(Oxford, 2007)

A twelfth-century migration from Tegeingl to Lancashire, in Wales, Oxford and beyond (T M Charles-Edwards and R Evans, eds)

(forthcoming)

Northumbria, Cumbria, and the Gaelic-speaking world c. 650–1050

(forthcoming)

Cross-slab, Tulach Léis/ Tullylease, Co. Cork

St Patrick’s chapel, Heysham, Lancashire

What is your subject and specific area of study?

I am the Lecturer in Celtic History at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic. I specialise in contacts between different areas of the Insular world: my forthcoming monograph investigates links between the kingdom of Northumbria and the Gaelic-speaking world, but I have also worked on connections between Northumbria, Strathclyde and Wales. I co-ordinate the Celtic History papers in the Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Tripos and I also contribute to the teaching of other ASNC papers, such as Palaeography.

The ASNC Tripos is concerned with the history, material culture, languages and literatures of the different peoples of Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, mainly in the earlier middle ages. I became drawn to this field whilst still at school, inspired by the Viking-Age sculpture which is particularly prolific in my native region (the north-west of England), an interest in local place-names and exposure to modern Celtic languages. I trained as an historian, but historians studying the early medieval period tend to have a wide and flexible range of skills including knowledge of several languages and an interest in archaeology, onomastics (the study of names) and palaeography (the study of handwriting, an essential skill for reading manuscripts). The ASNC Tripos enables students to develop many of these skills whilst pursuing particular interests within the field. I strongly recommend the ASNC Tripos to students who have enquiring and flexible minds, and a desire to delve deeply into the past.

What makes Clare College such a good place to study your subject?

Clare is a beautiful college, with the finest gardens in Cambridge and elegant seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century architecture. Clare is renowned for its exceptionally friendly atmosphere, which permeates the fellowship and the student body. Clare is located very close to the Faculty of English (of which ASNC is a part) and the college has a strong cohort of ASNC students. The college library has an extensive selection of ASNC books, including dictionaries, essential textbooks and recent scholarly publications, as well as a good selection of pamphlets produced by the department of ASNC.