Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
Photo © Jooney Woodward
Leah Tether is a scholar of medieval French and English literature, Arthurian romance, book history and publishing studies. She completed her PhD in Medieval Literature at Durham in 2009 and then became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Cultures of the Digital Economy Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. She has a background in trade publishing, having worked at Penguin Books. She took up the post of MA Course Director and Senior Lecturer in Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in 2012, and then became a Principal Lecturer in 2014.
Leah joined the University of Bristol in 2015 as Senior Lecturer. She became Reader in 2017 and Professor in 2019. She served as the Graduate Education Director for the Faculty of Arts (Deputy Dean of Arts, Graduate Studies) from 2017 to 2021, and was the Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies in 2017/18. From 2021, she was University Education Director (Quality) before being appointed as Acting Head of the School of Humanities in 2022. Her current research looks at the publishing histories of vernacular medieval narratives from manuscript to digital. Her monographs include The Continuations of Chrétien's Perceval: Content and Continuation, Extension and Ending (D.S. Brewer, 2012), Publishing the Grail in Medieval and Renaissance France (D.S. Brewer, 2017), The General Reader and the Academy: Medieval French Literature and Penguin Classics (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Hidden Secrets of a Medieval Fragment (ARC Humanities Press, forthcoming 2021). She is now working on a project exploring medieval literature that didn't make it to print in the early-modern period, with a monograph on the subject due for publication in 2022/23 with DeGruyter entitled Unpublished: Medieval Literature and the Early-Modern Publisher.
Research supervision
Leah is able to supervise research postgraduates in the following areas: Arthurian Literature (French and English) with a focus on manuscript studies; digital humanities; history of the book; medieval and digital reading cultures; medieval French literature 1200-1400; publishing studies.
Teaching
Leah’s current undergraduate teaching covers medieval English and French medieval literature, trans-historical Arthurian literature, publishing and digital studies. At postgraduate level, she teaches on material and digital cultures of literature.
Current Affiliations
Immediate Past President - International Arthurian Society British Branch
International Secretary - International Courtly Literature Society
Fellow - Royal Historical Society
Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Trustee - The Vinaver Trust
Associate Editor - Cambridge University Press series 'Elements in Publishing and Book Culture'
Contact
Office: 13 Woodland Road, 2.42
Email: leah.tether@bristol.ac.uk
External positions
External Examiner - English (Medieval/Early-Modern), University of Lincoln
1 Sept 2021 → …
External Examiner - Publishing, University College London
1 Feb 2019 → 30 Nov 2022
External Examiner - Publishing, Bath Spa University
1 Sept 2015 → 1 Nov 2019
Structured keywords and research groupings
- Centre for Medieval Studies
Keywords
- Book history
- Arthurian literature
- Medieval literature
- Library history
- Publishing Studies
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Projects
- 1 Finished
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SABM: Developing a Strategic Alliance of the Arts and Humanities: Bristol-Macquarie
Hurcombe, M. J., Hanna, E., Mukherjee, S., Pollmann, K. F. L., Tether, L., Pohl, B., Hales, S. J. & Hodos, T.
8/10/18 → 30/06/19
Project: Research
Research output
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Eadmer and his Books: a Case Study of Monastic Self-publishing
Pohl, B. & Tether, L., 2023, (Accepted/In press) Eadmer of Canterbury: Historian, Hagiographer, and Theologian. Rozier, C., Vaughn, S. & Gasper, G. (eds.). Brill Academic Publishers, (Anselm Studies and Texts).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter in a book
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Navigating and Indexing Arthurian Romance in Benoît Rigaud’s edition of Lancelot du Lac (1591)
Tether, L. & Taylor, J. H. M., 1 Apr 2023, In: Arthurian Literature. 38, p. 236-253Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
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Review: Communities of Print: Books and their Readers in Early Modern Europe, ed. Rosamund Oates and Jessica G. Purdy
Tether, L., 4 Aug 2023, (Submitted) In: Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review (Academic Journal)
Prizes
Activities
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International Arthurian Society British Branch Conference 2023
Leah Tether (Speaker)
7 Sept 2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
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International Courtly Literature Society International Congress
Leah Tether (Speaker) & Benjamin Pohl (Speaker)
24 Jul 2023 → 28 Jul 2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
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Researching Penguin: A Far From Random House
Leah Tether (Keynote/plenary speaker)
2023Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Invited talk