Skip to main content
Damian Walford Davies

Professor Damian Walford Davies

Deputy Vice Chancellor

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
WalfordDaviesD@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 76437
Campuses
Main Building, Room DVC Office, Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT
cymraeg
Welsh speaking
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor, a role I took on in August 2021. From 2014 to 2018 I was Head of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy - a multi-discipline School with fascinating synergies between its constituent subjects - and from 2018 to 2021 I was Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - a vibrant, diverse yet connected family of 10 academic Schools. I continue to supervise PhD students - please see the information under the adjacent tabs.

Publication

2023

2020

2019

2018

  • Walford Davies, D. 2018. Paradise destroyed. In: Dead Ground. Clutag Press, pp. 125-134.

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1994

1992

1975

Articles

Book sections

Books

Research

The main fields of my research are Romanticism (in particular the relation between literature and politics in the age of revolution) and the wider material cultures of the Romantic period; Romantic historicism and the methodologies of Romantic Studies (including counterfactualism and critical-creative approaches); Romanticism and geography/ cartography; Welsh Writing in English; twentieth-century poetry; and Creative Writing (in particular poetry) – together, of course, with the interfaces between these periods, disciplines and methods.

I am completing the co-authored final volume of the Oxford Literary History of  Wales, of which I am General Editor. Recent publications include articles on Coleridge, shipwreck and trauma and on Keats’s creative-critical negotiations with the disease that killed him; the edited collection Counterfactual Romanticism (Manchester University Press, 2019); the co-edited collection Romantic Cartographies (Cambridge University Press, 2020); and the collection Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected (University of Wales Press, 2016). Forthcoming publications include the Cambridge edition of Thomas Love Peacock's novel, The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829); and a creative non-fiction book, The Ground, which creatively burrows into five adjacent fields in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Recent poetry collections include Judas (Seren, 2015) and Docklands (Seren, 2019) – the latter a ghost story in verse, located in 1890s Cardiff. I am particularly interested in deploying the dramatic monologue to retrieve – if only ultimately to emphasise the irrecoverability of – history’s lost or marginal voices. I am currently completing a poetic biography of the great Italian cyclist Gino Bartali (1914–2000), twice winner of the Tour de France (1938 and 1948).

Teaching

I am currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor and therefore my teaching time is limited, but my curriculum portfolio includes undergraduate and MA modules on Romanticism, Welsh Writing in English and Creative Writing. I continue to supervise PhD students and welcome applications in the above areas.

Biography

I joined the School of English, Communication & Philosophy at Cardiff in 2013 from Aberystwyth University, where I was Head of the Department of English & Creative Writing and Rendel Chair of English. I was Head of School at Cardiff from 2014 to 2018, when I took on the role of Pro Vice-Chancellor for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2021 I took on the role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

I served as Chair of Literature Wales, one of the national companies of Wales, from 2012 to 2018, and from 2015 to 2018 I was Chair of the Board of Cardiff University Press, Cardiff University's innovative Diamond Open Access institutional publisher.

Professional memberships

I am a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Supervisions

I welcome applications for PhD study in the fields of Romantic-period literature and culture; literary geography/ cartography; Welsh Writing in English; and Creative Writing (epsecially poetry).