About
Professor Richard Gwynedd Parry is an academic lawyer and a qualified barrister. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn and he has a PhD in law from Lancaster University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of law, history and language, and especially in the context of Wales and the Welsh language. Hi approach is interdisciplinary and much of his recent work is in the field of socio-legal-history.
He has a sustained record of scholarly publications, including monographs, articles and contributions to edited volumes. They include publications in leading peer-reviewed law journals, including Legal Studies, Criminal Law Review, Child and Family Law Quarterly, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, European Human Rights Law Review and The Irish Jurist. His interdisciplinarity is reflected in articles in journals such as the Welsh History Review and the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium.
He published a biography of Sir David Hughes Parry with University of Wales Press in 2010. This was shortly followed by his book, Cymru’r Gyfraith: Sylwadau ar Hunaniaeth Gyfreithiol (University of Wales Press, 2012), which explored some of the emerging themes in the development of Welsh legal identity and the use of the Welsh language in the law. His book, Y Gyfraith yn ein Llên (University of Wales Press, 2019), was awarded the Hywel Dda Prize by the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in 2020.
He has served on several national committees in Wales, including the Welsh Language Commissioner's Advisory Panel, the Welsh Government's Welsh Language Partnership Council and many of the Committees of Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (including a term as Vice-Chairman of its Academic Board). He is currently a member of the Council and Court of the National Eisteddfod, and is a member of the executive committee of the Welsh Legal History Society. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and serves on its fellowship scrutiny committee for Economic and Social Sciences, Education and Law. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. From 2020 to 2024 he was Head of the Department of Welsh at Swansea University. He is a door tenant at Angel Chambers, barristers, Swansea, where he had started his career and practised in the 1990s.