Professor Gruffydd Aled Williams

Emeritus Professor Gruffydd Aled Williams was brought up in Glyndyfrdwy in the old county of Merioneth, the area where one of Owain Glyndŵr’s estates was located and which gave him his name.  He lectured at Dublin and Bangor before being appointed in 1995 Professor of Welsh at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. 

Since retiring in 2008 much of his research has focused on Owain Glyndŵr.  He delivered the 2010 British Academy Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture on medieval poetry associated with Glyndŵr, and his Dyddiau Olaf Owain Glyndŵr (2015) was awarded the Welsh Creative Non-fiction prize in Literature Wales’s Book of the Year competition in 2016 (this work was published in English as The Last Days of Owain Glyndŵr in 2017). 

Professor Williams is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and is President of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society.