Professor Patrick Sims-Williams FBA

Patrick Sims-Williams is Emeritus Professor of Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University. Between 1977 and 1993 he was a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and a Lecturer and then Reader in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic in the University of Cambridge. In 1994 he became Professor of Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth.

Since 1996 he has been a Fellow of the British Academy. Between 1998 and 2008 he was a Commissioner, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Since 2011 he has been President of the International Congress of Celtic Studies. In 2021 he became an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Patrick Sims-Williams is the founding editor and publisher of Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies (1981-), renamed Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies in 1993, and also publishes its related book series: see the CMCS website.

Prizes won by Patrick Sims-Williams include:

• the 1992 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize (British Academy) for Religion and Literature in Western England, 600-800
• the 1999 Antiquity Prize for the ‘Best Paper’ in 1998 (‘Genetics, Linguistics and Prehistory: Thinking Big and Thinking Straight’, Antiquity, 72 (1998), 505-27)
• the 2007 G. T. Clark Award (Cambrian Archaeological Association) for The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phonology and Chronology, c. 400-1200
• the 2011 Vernam Hull Prize for Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature
• the 2020 Francis Jones Prize (Jesus College Oxford) for The Book of Llandaf as a Historical Source.

Patrick Sims-Williams’s Public Lectures include:

• the 1981/2 O’Donnell Lectures, University of Oxford
• the 1986 O’Donnell Lecture, University of Edinburgh
• the 1997 Tucker-Cruse Lecture, University of Bristol
• the 1999 Rudolf Thurneysen Memorial Lecture, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn
• the 2000/1 O’Donnell Lecture, University of Wales
• the 2005 H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture, University of Cambridge
• the 2009 John V. Kelleher Memorial Lecture, Harvard University
• the 2010 G. J. Williams Memorial Lecture, Cardiff University
• the 2010 J. E. Caerwyn & Gwen Williams Lecture, University of Wales
• the 2015 Osborn Bergin Memorial Lecture, University College Dublin.

Research projects directed by Patrick Sims-Williams:

• 1997-9 Leverhulme Trust Manuscripts of the Old Welsh Period
• 1999-2000 University of Wales Collaboration Fund Machine-readable transcriptions of all prose in 13th-century Middle Welsh
• 2001-6 Arts & Humanities Research Council Ancient Celtic Place-Names in Europe and Asia Minor
• 2003-4 British Academy Incidence of Celtic Compound Names in the Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire
• 2006-7 Arts & Humanities Research Council Early Celtic Linguistic Evidence from Dacia and Moesia Inferior
• 2007-8 British Academy A Supplement to Celtic Personal Names in the Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Empire
• 2007-9 Arts & Humanities Research Council An Electronic Version of Peter Clement Bartrum’s Welsh Genealogies A.D. 300-1500
• 2007- [in progress] British Academy The Development of the Welsh Language/Datblygiad yr Iaith Gymraeg
• 2008-13 Arts & Humanities Research Council Gaulish Morphology with particular reference to Areas South and East of the Danube
• 2011-12 Leverhulme Trust Grammatical Conservation and Innovation in Thirteenth-Century Welsh Texts
• 2012-13 Modern Humanities Research Association Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 23
• 2013-14 Modern Humanities Research Association Early-fifteenth-century Welsh prose manuscripts.

Complete list of publications