About

My research and teaching experience spans both the Ancient and Early Medieval Latin worlds, with an emphasis on the multiplicity of ways in which they are connected. My interests lie in investigating the transmission and reception of texts, including their continuity across conventional scholarly boundaries. My work also encompasses the medium of transmission, the manuscript, as offering integral evidence to this type of research.

My current role is a component of Dr Jacopo Bisagni’s Ireland and Carolingian Brittany: Texts and Transmission (IrCaBriTT) project. The aim of this IRC Laureate project is to use a detailed philological and palaeographical study of newly identified manuscripts to investigate the intellectual connections between early medieval Brittany and its neighbours: Ireland, Britain, and France in particular.

My focus is a compilation of Latin exegetical material containing glosses in both Old Breton and Old English. In addition to the use of these medieval vernaculars, the text and its two manuscripts evidence a complex regional network of intellectual and scribal activity. A complimentary aspect of my work is the survey and analysis of exegetical scholarship among the Bretons more broadly.

Previous to this I held a two-year IRC postdoctoral fellowship (2017–2019), under the mentorship of Dr Anthony Harvey at the Dictionary of Medieval Latin for Celtic Sources, RIA, Dublin. My project was ‘Intertextuality in early medieval exegesis: the composition and reception of the commentary on Exodus in In Pentateuchum Commentarii’. It employed a detailed textual and intertextual investigation of this text to investigate three aspects of it that have a wider significance to the field:

• the manipulation and adaptation of Late Antique and Patristic sources by early medieval authors seeking to communicate with new readers in new cultural contexts.


• the reception of early medieval compositions and their exegesis in a wide range of literary genres.


• the role of Irish scholar-authors in this dynamic literary tradition.

My completed my PhD in Classics at NUI Galway (2017), supervised by Professor Michael Clarke. My thesis, ‘Images and representations of the sea in early medieval Hiberno-Latin and vernacular literature: studies in intertextuality and innovation’, looked at four genres of text: exegesis and hagiography, visions and voyages, martyrologies, and scholastic texts. It found new evidence for Continental Latin sources used in Irish works and demonstrated that the Irish authors of these works participated in the international mainstream while also adapting established and ancient Latin sources in innovative and creative ways to serve new purposes.