Rate My Professor Helen Fulton

Helen Fulton is Chair in Medieval Literature in the Department of English within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol, a position she has held since 2015. A graduate of the University of Sydney (BA, PhD) and the University of Oxford (Diploma in Celtic Studies), she trained as a medievalist in English and Celtic Studies, focusing on literary and linguistic history. Her career trajectory includes senior leadership appointments such as Head of the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, Head of the School of Arts at Swansea University, Pro-Dean in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney, and Faculty of Arts Director of Research at Bristol since 2021. She has held Visiting Research Fellowships at Magdalen College and St John’s College, Oxford, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and leads the Borders and Borderlands research cluster in the Centre for Medieval Studies at Bristol.

Fulton has specialised in medieval Welsh literature and its connections with the literatures of medieval England and Ireland. Her research encompasses the history and politics of medieval literature, classical reception in the Middle Ages, Arthurian literature, medieval urban literature, and cultural exchanges between England and Wales in the Middle Ages. Current projects include editions of medieval Welsh political poetry and the medieval Welsh version of the Troy legend, Ystorya Dared, alongside a monograph on literary representations of the city in medieval British literature. From 2020 to 2022, she held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to research the literary biography of Sir William Herbert (d. 1469). With over 80 publications including ten authored or edited books, notable works include her editorship of The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature (2019), Chaucer and Italian Culture (2021), Medieval Welsh Literature and its European Contexts (2024), and Narrative and Media (2005). She has acted as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on 17 funded projects from the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, AHRC, and Australian Research Council. Fulton serves as Editor of Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, General Editor of the Brepols series Borders, Boundaries and Landscapes, Series Co-Editor of New Century Chaucer for University of Wales Press, and Chair of its Editorial Board. She contributes to public engagement via BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, the Map of Medieval Bristol, and inventing languages for Netflix’s Cursed (2020), exerting significant influence through keynotes, conferences, and peer review in medieval studies.