
Professor Leah Tether
BA Hons(Dunelm.), MA(Dunelm.), PhD(Dunelm.)
Current positions
Professor of Medieval Literature and Publishing
Department of English
Contact
Media contact
If you are interested in speaking to this expert, contact the University’s Media & PR Team on
Research interests
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 has been appointed to the role of University Education Director (Quality). 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in the early-modern period, with a monograph on the subject due for publication in 2022/23 with DeGruyter entitled Unpublished: Medieval Literature and the Early-Modern Publisher.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
Editor-in-Chief - Journal of the International Arthurian Society
Associate Editor - Cambridge University Press series 'Elements in Publishing and Book Culture'
Contact
Office: 3-5 Woodland Road, B15
Tel: +44 (0) 117 42 84496
Email: leah.tether@bristol.ac.uk
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Developing a Strategic Alliance of the Arts and Humanities: Bristol-Macquarie
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
This project explores common approaches, questions and interests between the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol (UK) and Macquarie University (Australia). It concentrates on three areas in this…Managing organisational unit
Department of FrenchDates
08/10/2018 to 30/06/2019
Thesis supervisions
Insular Secular Carolling in the Late Middle Ages
Supervisors
(Re)shaping Genre
Supervisors
‘Every stroke of the book will be from my pen’
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
12/05/2022Anglais: Floris and Blancheflour: milieu de XIIIe siècle
Floire et Blanchefleur en Europe: anthologie
The Holy Grail: The Material Dissemination of Grail Romance from Manuscript to Print in Northern Europe
The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature
Vernacular Literatures
Review: Christine Ferlampin-Acher, ed. Arthur en Europe à la fin du Moyen Âge
Scriptorium: Bulletin Codicologique
Review: Irène Fabry-Tehranchi and Catherine Nicolas, L'iconographie du Lancelot-Graal
The Medieval Review