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School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology

Profile of Ms Nia Powell BA (Wales) MA (Cantab)

Name:

Ms Nia Powell

Position:

Lecturer in Welsh History

Email:

Location:

Room 224.5 Main Arts

Phone:

01248 382249

Areas of Teaching & Supervision

  • Early modern Wales and early modern social and cultural history

Part One (Year 1)

  • The Age of the Princes (module co-ordinator and contributor), Wales and Europe (contributor), Images of Wales (contributor), Birth of Modern Europe 1470-1560? (contributor).

Part Two (Years 2 &3)

  • 'The Acts of Union': Wales and England 1525-1543; Wales and Europe : Culture and Society during the Renaissance; Agweddau ar Hanes Dysg yng Nghyfnod y Dadeni; Wales 1660-1789; Law and Society in Wales 1558-1640 (special subject).

Current Research

  • Political, social, economic and cultural history of early modern Wales

I am currently completing an electronic edition of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Gaol Files for Denbighshire. These are records of criminal cases that appeared before the Great Sessions, or Assize Court for that county and part of the Great Sessions archive held at NLW. Some other research springs from this, such as a study of the conflict between institutions of state and community-based structures in controlling behaviour in early modern Wales. Other work includes a study of sufficiency in early modern Wales and a revision of the accepted view of the uplands as an impoverished and backward subsistence economy. This also involves a comparative study of the economic vitality of other upland regions in Britain during the early modern period.

Key & Recent Publications (full list of publications)

  • 1989 ‘Crime and the community in Denbighshire during the 1590s : the evidence of the records of the court of Great Sessions’, in J. Gwynfor Jones, ed., Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1989), pp. 261-294.
  • 1990 ‘Trosedd a chymdeithas yng Ngogledd Cymru : dwy sir ar droad yr unfed ganrif ar bymtheg [Crime and society in north Wales : two counties at the turn of the sixteenth century]’, Côf Cenedl, 5 (1990), pp.29-55
  • 1991 Dyffryn Clwyd in the time of Elizabeth I (Coelion Lectures, Ruthin, 1991) pp. 29.
    1988 ‘Agweddau ar fywyd William Morgan a’i gyfnod [aspects of the life of William Morgan and his period]’, Y Traethodydd, 143 (1988), pp.118-134.
  • 1988 ‘Dr. William Morgan and his parishioners at Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant’, Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 49 (1988), pp.87-115.
  • 1999 ‘Robert ap Huw : clerwr gwyllt o Fôn / Robert ap Huw : a wanton minstrel of Anglesey’, in Welsh Music History/Hanes Cerddoriaeth Cymru, 3 : Astudiaethau Robert ap Huw Studies (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1999), pp.5-53.
  • 2000 ‘Women and strict-metre poetry in Wales’, in Michael Roberts and S. Clarke, eds., Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2000), pp.129-158.
  • 2003 'Arthur Bulkeley, reformation bishop of Bangor 1541-1553/4’, Journal of Welsh Religious History, new ser., 3, pp. 23-52.
  • 2004 'Dyfalu Dafydd Nanmor’, Llên Cymru, 27, pp. 86-112.
  • 2005 'Do numbers count? Towns in early modern Wales’, Urban History, 32.1, 46-67.
  • 2005 'Cenedligrwydd, cenedlaetholdeb ac Owain Glyndŵr [Nationality, nationalism and Owain Glyndŵr]’, in John Davies and Tegid Roberts, eds., Yr Angen am Owain: Darlithoedd Fforwm Hanes Cymru (Carreg Gwalch, 2005), 11-27.
  • 2007 ‘Urban population in early modern Wales revisited’, Welsh History Review, 23.3, pp. 1-43.
  • 2007 ’On the margins of existence? Upland prosperity in early modern Wales’. Studia Celtica, 41.