Deborah Hayden

My research interests centre on medieval Irish, Latin and Welsh language, literature and textual culture, in particular the history of education and linguistic thought in classical and medieval tradition; premodern Irish medical writing and its wider European context; early Irish lexicography; Irish and Welsh legal tradition; and translation literature. I am currently Lead Editor of the journal Language & History.

From 2022-2026 I am Principal Investigator of the project LEIGHEAS: Language, Education and Medical Learning in the Premodern Gaelic World, funded by a Consolidator Laureate Award from the Irish Research Council. The central aim of LEIGHEAS is to advance our knowledge of the nature and scope of medical learning in the premodern Gaelic world by charting the vernacular translation and transmission of medical texts across Ireland and Scotland, ca 1350–1700. The project will integrate innovative digital tools for network analysis of all scribes, locations and texts attested in the extant vernacular medical sources of this region with detailed philological and historical research on a subset of manuscripts associated with Connacht, Ireland. It is argued that the sources at the heart of this case study shed new light on the relationship between Irish-language medical learning and other aspects of contemporary literary culture, including narrative, legal, religious and historical writing. The project aims to illuminate the social, pedagogical and manuscript context for the production and circulation of medical texts throughout the Gaelic world, while also positioning this corpus firmly within a wider intellectual framework by exploring the complex multilingual and cross-cultural interactions that shaped the development of scientific writing across northern Europe more broadly.

From 2021-25 I am also Co-Investigator of the IRC/AHRC-funded UK-Ireland Digital Humanities project OG(H)AM: Harnessing Digital Technologies to Transform Understanding of OghamWriting, from the 4th Century to the 21st, as part of which I am researching the use of ogam in manuscript sources from the medieval to modern periods. In 2024 we received follow-on funding from the AHRC for the Impact and Engagement project Ogham Palaeography+, as part of which I am working with two artists, Thomas Keyes and Chris Judge to increase public awareness of the ogham script.

I have recently been involved in two other major projects that have now concluded: from 2020-21 I was a Co-Investigator of the IRC/AHRC-funded networking project Developing a Digital Framework for the Medieval Gaelic World, and from 2018–21 I was Principal Investigator for the project Medieval Irish medicine in its north-western European context: a case study of two unpublished texts (MIMNEC), funded by a Starting Laureate Award from the Irish Research Council. 

Postdoctoral and postgraduate supervision, past and present:

Postdoctoral:

Dr Siobhán Barrett, postdoctoral researcher for LEIGHEAS: Language, Education and Medical Learning in the Premodern Gaelic World (IRC Consolidator Laureate Award Project, 2022-2026)

Dr Siobhán Barrett, A Triad of Medical Glossaries (IRC Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2020-2022)

Dr Siobhán Barrett, postdoctoral researcher for MIMNEC: Medieval Irish Medicine in its North-western European Context (IRC Starting Laureate Award Project, 2018-2021)

Postgraduate:

Truc Ha Nguyen (co-supervised with Prof. David Stifter), A critical edition of Airec Menman Uraird mac Coisse (funded by a John & Pat Hume Scholarship)

Emer Kavanagh, Concepts of magic and the supernatural in medieval Ireland (funded by a John & Pat Hume Scholarship from 2019-21 and by an IRC Postgraduate Scholarship from 2021-23)

Mairéad Finnegan (co-supervised with Dr Michael Potterton), Dress, clothing and textiles in medieval Ireland (funded by a John & Pat Hume Scholarship)

Dylan Bailey, Different Visions: an investigation into the depiction and perception of the physically abnormal within early Irish learned texts (funded by an IRC Postgraduate Award through the LEIGHEAS project)

Benedetta D'Antuono, Ireland and Europe: cultural intersections and literary transitions in a late-medieval manuscript (funded by a John & Pat Hume Fellow Scholarship)

I welcome inquiries from prospective postgraduate and postdoctoral scholars interested in working on any aspect of the literature or intellectual history of medieval Ireland and the wider Insular world.