Dr David Griffith BA, PhD, FSA

I studied at the University of Exeter: a BA in English Medieval Studies followed by a PhD on popular culture and medieval English romance narratives.

I teach and lecture primarily later medieval and Tudor literature but happily venture into the modern period.  I currently convene a number of drama modules: Plays and Performance (year 1), Tragedy (year 2) and the final year option The Birth of English Theatre: from the Mystery Plays to Jacobean City Comedy (from 2016-17). My other particular interest is the First World War and I co-teach (with Dr Deborah Longworth) the final year module Remembering World War One.

I am pleased to supervise MA, MPhil and PhD students on literary and cross-disciplinary subjects. Current and recent students have worked on:

• ‘The political appropriation of John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: a manuscript study of British Library, MS Harley 1766’ (PhD)
• ‘Asceticism in late-medieval religious writing: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114’ (PhD)
• ‘A revelation of purgatory to ane holy woman (1422).’ (MPhil)
• ‘Magical rings in Middle English Romance: an interdisciplinary study’ (MPhil)
• ‘The medieval house and curtilage: domestic spaces in the English medieval romance’ (MPhil)
• ‘Literary representations of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the sixteenth century’ (MA)
• 'Early Modern Dream Visions' (PhD) (co-supervision with Gillian Wright)
• 'The foliate head in medieval English ecclesiastical buildings' (MLitt)
• 'Politics and Sainthood: Literary Representations of St Margaret of Scotland from the C11th to the C15th in England and Scotland' (PhD) (co-supervision with Emily Wingfield)
• 'Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Chronicle (c.1420)' (PhD) (co-supervision with Emily Wingfield)

I welcome enquiries from prospective graduate students looking to work in the following areas: epigraphy, medieval English textual and vernacular cultures, art and culture of the medieval English parish church, late-medieval devotional and mystical writing, religious and secular iconographic traditions, romance genre and the culture of chivalry, Tudor writing (esp. religious) the impact of the Reformation on artistic production, antiquaries and antiquarians.
I also welcome students with projects on writing of or about the First World War (from 1914 to the present day).

Find out more - our PhD English Literature  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

David Griffith's research activity is cross-disciplinary and is concerned with correlations between textual, artistic and material cultures in England in the medieval and early modern periods. He is currently developing related projects on the large and, for the most part, unstudied body of vernacular inscriptions produced in England between the Conquest and the Tudor reformations. An interpretative study will be followed by a major catalogue of the corpus, which extends to thousands of extant and lost inscriptions in a number of languages (including English, insular French, Cornish, Welsh, Dutch and Hebrew). This research has led to interests in antiquaries, especially John Weever, and antiquarian responses to the medieval period.

I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and am involved in societies and organizations concerned with the preservation and understanding of medieval literary, artistic and material cultures. I am an active member of The Church Monuments Society  and of The Monumental Brass Society (The MBS archive is housed in the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.) I'm also a member of The Suffolk Records Society, The Norfolk Churches Trust, the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, and the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society.

I'm a member of The Early English Text Society, and I sit on the advisory board of the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures.