School of Law

Profile of Dr Sara Elin Roberts

Name:

Dr Sara Elin Roberts

Position:

Welsh Medium Teaching Fellow

Email:

sara.e.roberts@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

Main Arts

Phone:

Dr Sara Elin Roberts is a legal historian whose work on medieval Welsh law is a valuable and acknowledged contribution to the field.

Educated at Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni, Anglesey, she won the Richard Hughes Scholarship to study at the University of Wales, Bangor, where she achieved first class honours in Welsh and History. She won the J. B. Davies Scholarship to St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she gained an M.St. in Historical Research (Medieval): she studied under Professor R. R. Davies and Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards, concentrating on Welsh law and the law of the March. Funded by the AHRB, she undertook research for her doctorate in Celtic at Jesus College, Oxford, on the legal triads and fifteenth-century aspects of medieval Welsh law. University of Wales Press published her pioneering study of the legal triads in 2007, The Legal Triads of Medieval Wales. It was awarded the David Yale Prize by the Selden Society for a distinguished contribution to the study of the laws and legal institutions of England and Wales; and also the Hywel Dda Prize by the Board of Celtic Studies for her contribution to the field of Welsh law.

As a member of a number of academic societies, Sara Elin Roberts is regularly invited to give public lectures both in Britain and abroad on various aspects of medieval Welsh literature.

Her main interests are legal history, in particular later, fifteenth-century developments in medieval Welsh law and the training and learning of the medieval Welsh lawyer. She is also an authority on medieval Welsh poetry, in particular the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym, as the editor of the bardic debate for www.dafyddapgwilym.net.

Publications and Papers

Major publications

The Legal Triads of Medieval Wales (University of Wales Press, July 2007). 150,000 words.
My contribution to www.dafyddapgwilym.net.

Journal articles and contributions

‘A Legal Custom from Brecknock’, Studia Celtica 35 (2001), 307-323.
‘Creu Trefn o Anhrefn: Gwaith Copïydd Testun Cyfreithiol’, The National Library of Wales Journal 32, (2002), 397-420.
‘Addysg Broffesiynol yng Nghymru yn y Canol Oesoedd: y Beirdd a’r Cyfreithwyr’, Llên Cymru 26 (2003), 1-17.
‘Tri Dygyngoll Cenedl: the Development of a Triad’, Studia Celtica 37 (2003), 163-182.
‘Plaints in Welsh Medieval Law’, Journal of Celtic Studies 4 (2004), 219-261.
‘Dafydd ap Gwilym, ei ewythr a’r gyfraith’, Llên Cymru,(2005), 100-114.
Law-texts, Celtic [2] Welsh Gwyddoniadur Astudiaethau Celtaidd (2005).
‘Cwpled Coll o Waith Dafydd ap Gwilym’, Dwned 11 (2005), 65-73.
‘Emerging from the Bushes: The Welsh Law of Women in the Legal Triads’, CSANA Yearbook 7 (2008), 58-76.
“‘By the authority of the Devil”: the operation of Welsh and English Law in Medieval Wales’, Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales ed. Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones (New York, 2008), 85-97.
‘Law texts and their sources in late medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review (2008), 41-59.
Forthcoming: ‘More Plaints in Welsh Medieval Law’, Journal of Celtic Studies.