Professor Aengus Ward MA (University College Dublin, National University of Ireland), PhD (Birmingham)

I completed my first degree and Masters at University College Dublin. I won a National University of Ireland Travelling Scholarship, and took advantage of this to move to the University of Birmingham, which was, and is, one of the most important centres of scholarship on medieval Spain. I completed my Phd at the University of Birmingham in 1995. I have worked in the University of Birmingham as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader since 1994.

I led the AHRC-funded Estoria de Espanna Digital research project at the University of Birmingham between 2013 and 2017. I have been a member of, or contributed to, research projects at the École Normale Supérieure (Lyon), the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the Universidad de Sevilla and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. I have given invited talks or plenary lectures at the Universidad de Salamanca, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the Universidad de Sevilla, the Sorbonne, the University of Oxford, Queen Mary London, the Universidad de Buenos Aires, the ENS Lyon, Georgetown University, the University of Minnesota, University College Dublin and University College Galway, to name the most significant. I have also organized research events of varying kinds which have brought scholars from these institutions  and others to the University of Birmingham. The University of Birmingham has a lengthy tradition of excellence in medieval studies generally and ibero-medievalism more specifically; thanks to my research the University of Birmingham has, amongst Russell Group institutions, unique name recognition in many parts of this academic community. As a result of this, I have supervised here in Birmingham a series of doctoral and post-doctoral visitors from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela and the Universidad de Sevilla.

I have taught on a wide range of modules covering aspects of medieval and early-modern culture and history, and also linguistics.

My final year module The Digital Past is an innovative module which trains students to use digital tools to engage with medieval manuscripts. We have designed an on-line course to prepare students, and anyone interested, in how to encode text. Students also reflect on their own learning and can do this in a variety of ways – here is an example of one student reflecting on learning through a blog.

I also teach on second year courses covering themes of tolerance and intolerance in the context of the Spanish Inquisition and I contribute to Core modules in the first year on similar themes of inclusion and exclusion.

I welcome applications for postgraduate study on an aspect of medieval Iberia, on history and historiography in particular and also on textual editing. I particularly welcome suggestions for digital editing of medieval Iberian texts. I am especially interested in collaborating with Distance Learning projects.

I currently supervise three PhD projects: Holly Kashin Brown’s digital edition and study of three texts written by women authors in the late Middle Ages (with Dr. Cat Smith); Elena Caetano Álvarez’s study of the imperial ambitions of Alfonso el Sabio as realised in the Estoria de Espanna (with Dr. Simon Yarrow); and James Kawalek’s study of the Historia Compostelana (with Dr. William Purkis).

In the past I have supervised, or co-supervised, to a successful conclusion doctoral and Masters theses on Alfonso el Sabio, (digital) editing and medieval historiography by Christian Kusi Obodum, Polly Duxfield, Carol Ann van der Walt, Manolo Hijano Villegas, Patrick Quinn and Lauren Brinsdon.

I have also co-supervised postgraduate research on aspects of linguistics, including language policy in Gibraltar (Eddie Picardo), Galicia (Stewart Bayliss) Aragon (Rosa Bercero) and the Basque Country (Rosie Critchlow), and on aspects of discourse analysis (Nuria Guerra Bernal and Ángel Garralda).

Find out more - our PhD Hispanic Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.