About
Tudur Hallam is Professor of Welsh at Swansea University. He is an award-winning poet, a Fulbright fellow and a board member for the Arts Council of Wales. He is Chair of the Association for the Study of Welsh Literature and Language and a member of the Executive for the Centre for Doctoral Training in Celtic Studies, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
He joined the Department of Welsh in 1999. He was appointed Chair of Welsh in 2011. His research interests are numerous, partly as he began his career in Swansea teaching sociolinguistics and translation, though he now teaches literature and creative writing.
He was born and raised in Penybanc, a village on the outskirts of Ammanford, or in Welsh, Rhydaman. This experience of growing up between two languages is central to his work. He once remarked in a poem:
Mae’n ffaith fod ’na Ammanfo’d,
a honno’n dre reit hynod;
eto gwn na wyddwn i
yn uniaith ddim amdani.
Yn Rhydaman y’m ganed.
Hi’n llwyr yw fy hyd a’m lled.
(It’s a fact that there’s a town called Ammanford, an interesting place, for sure, and yet I know that I was raised in Rhydaman. I’m from Rhydaman. I was born in Rhydaman, and I don’t translate.)
The Welsh language and its promotion motivates him and shapes his work. He has family in Y Felinheli and in Tredegar and the notion of Wales as one nation, open to all, is very important to him.
In 2016-2017, having been awarded a Fulbright fellowship, he worked as a visiting research professor at the University of Houston, USA. Comparing the cultural make-up of Wales and that of other cultures is evident in much of his work.
After periods in Aberystwyth, Swansea and more recently Houston, he lives with his family in Foelgastell, Carmarthenshire. In his local community, he is a school governor and a youth football coach.