A view of singleton campus including singleton park and the beach, with the sea stretching into the horizon.
Professor Tudur Hallam

Professor Tudur Hallam

Chair in Welsh, Cymraeg

Email address

Welsh language proficiency

Fluent Welsh Speaker
Office (Welsh Translation) - 169
First Floor
Talbot Building
Singleton Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision

About

Tudur Hallam is Professor of Welsh at Swansea University. He is an award-winning poet, a Fulbright fellow and a board member for the Arts Council of Wales. He is Chair of the Association for the Study of Welsh Literature and Language and a member of the Executive for the Centre for Doctoral Training in Celtic Studies, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

He joined the Department of Welsh in 1999. He was appointed Chair of Welsh in 2011. His research interests are numerous, partly as he began his career in Swansea teaching sociolinguistics and translation, though he now teaches literature and creative writing.

He was born and raised in Penybanc, a village on the outskirts of Ammanford, or in Welsh, Rhydaman. This experience of growing up between two languages is central to his work. He once remarked in a poem:

Mae’n ffaith fod ’na Ammanfo’d,

a honno’n dre reit hynod;

eto gwn na wyddwn i

yn uniaith ddim amdani.

Yn Rhydaman y’m ganed.

Hi’n llwyr yw fy hyd a’m lled.

(It’s a fact that there’s a town called Ammanford, an interesting place, for sure, and yet I know that I was raised in Rhydaman. I’m from Rhydaman. I was born in Rhydaman, and I don’t translate.)

The Welsh language and its promotion motivates him and shapes his work. He has family in Y Felinheli and in Tredegar and the notion of Wales as one nation, open to all, is very important to him.

In 2016-2017, having been awarded a Fulbright fellowship, he worked as a visiting research professor at the University of Houston, USA. Comparing the cultural make-up of Wales and that of other cultures is evident in much of his work.

After periods in Aberystwyth, Swansea and more recently Houston, he lives with his family in Foelgastell, Carmarthenshire. In his local community, he is a school governor and a youth football coach.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Welsh literature
  • Poetics
  • Creative writing
  • Drama
  • Language planning
  • Translation
  • Language teaching

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

During the twenty years he has been at Swansea, Professor Hallam has created and taught a wide variety of modules in the fields of translation, practical bilingualism, the history of Wales and its language, literature, drama and creative writing.

In 2018, his pedagogical course book for undergraduates, Llawlyfr Meistroli’r Gymraeg, was published by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol:

https://llyfrgell.porth.ac.uk/View.aspx?id=3905~4r~SBdFPxeY

He is part of an energetic teaching staff at the department and in 2020, the National Student Survey put Swansea at the top for student satisfaction in Welsh Studies.

He also enjoys presenting lectures on Wales and its culture internationally, including opportunities to do so at the universities of Houston and Harvard in 2016-17.

Research Award Highlights