Paul Birt

Biography

Chair of Celtic Studies

Faculty of Arts
Department of Modern Language and Literatures

Professor Birt's research area is comparative literatures of lesser-used languages of Western Europe. That led to his most recent book, Cerddi Alltudiaeth, published by the University of Wales Press in 1997.

Since 1998, Professor Birt has been researching the writings of the first generation of Welsh settlers in Patagonia, Argentina, from 1875 to 1900. The aim of the research is to make primary texts by Patagonian Welsh writers of the period more available and to reassess the identity shift and cultural survival reflected in their writings. The first of these texts, Gwaith a Bywyd John Daniel Evans, appeared in 2002.