Dr Megan Cavell

Dr Megan Cavell

Department of English Literature
Associate Professor

Contact details

Email
m.c.cavell@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Department of English Literature
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

I work on a range of topics in medieval studies, from Old English and Latin languages and literature to riddles, animals and gender.

Qualifications

  • BA in English Language and Literature, University of Western Ontario
  • MA in Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
  • PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge

Biography

After undertaking a BA and MA in Canada, I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2012. I then took up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto (2012-2014) and a Junior Research Fellowship at Durham University (2014-2016). I joined the Department of English Literature here at Birmingham in 2017, after lecturing in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford (2016-2017).

Teaching

  • Earliest English
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where They Came From
  •  and more.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome supervision inquiries from postgraduate students working on Old English, Anglo-Latin and comparative literature (especially poetry), and medieval animal studies.

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

Research

I work on a wide range of topics in medieval studies, from Old and early Middle English and Latin languages and literature to cross-period animal studies. My current research projects focus on predators in early medieval England and the Old English and Latin riddle traditions.

My past research has analysed literary representations of material culture, constructed objects and textiles, as well as theoretical approaches to non-human animals and the natural world. My first book, Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature, explored the early medieval fascination with constructive processes and constrictive practices, emphasising the ways in which Old English texts depict everything from material objects and human/animal bodies to abstract concepts as shaped things.

I am also the editor of The Riddle Ages: Early Medieval Riddles, Translations and Commentaries, whose aim is to provide open-access translations and commentaries of the Exeter Book and Latin riddles for an audience of students and interested members of the public. The website sponsors and I co-organise annual sessions on early medieval riddles with Jennifer Neville (Royal Holloway) at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds.

You can hear about some of my research on the following podcasts/radio programmes: