Raised on Anglesey, I received my early education in Wales before going to England for university. My undergraduate degree was in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies at Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, where I specialised in medieval Welsh language and literature, and old Germanic language and literature, particularly Old English. I also completed an MPhil in this field in 2004, writing my dissertation on Old English semantics (on different words for horses).

After working briefly as a researcher in the School of Welsh at Bangor University, in 2005 I started a PhD in Linguistics at Bangor, supervised by Professor Margaret Deuchar; I graduated in 2010. The focus of my PhD research was on bilingualism and code-switching, which is the phenomenon of inserting words from one language into sentences from another language - something particularly common in informal Welsh speech.

I have been a member of teaching staff in Linguistics at Bangor since 2009, initially as a Welsh-medium Teaching Fellow, then from September 2012 as a Lecturer in Welsh Linguistics, in both cases primarily funded by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. In 2016 I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Linguistics (Bilingualism). I am currently a member of staff of the Department of Linguistics, English Language and Bilingualism within the School of Arts, Culture and Language.

I have two research strands: my creative writing and my linguistic research.

I am the author of several Welsh novels, including Pumed Gainc y Mabinogi (2022), Cysgod y Mabinogi (2024) and Anfarwol, neu Diflaniad Theophilus Cibber (2025). I write in and around the cosmic horror genre, blending Welsh mythology with horror, fantasy or sci-fi elements. In my writing I explore themes such as Welshness (or Welshnesses), identity, tradition and belonging.

Anfarwol won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize at the National Eisteddfod in 2025. Pumed Gainc y Mabinogi was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2023.

My linguistic research interests focus on bilingualism (primarily in the Welsh context), especially relating to Welsh-English code-switching and on contact linguistics, specifically the effect of language contact on minority language grammar, with a particular focus on Welsh. In general I am interested in sociolinguistics, particularly grammatical variation, and have published on grammatical variation and change in Welsh due to contact with English. I also have an interest in historical linguistics, primarily in the Celtic and Germanic languages.

I primarily teach Welsh-medium modules at the School, particularly related to bilingualism, plus English-medium modules on sociolinguistics, Welsh Linguistics and/or Historical Linguistics, depending on their availability. The subjects I teach include general overviews of the grammar and linguistics of Welsh, aspects of bilingualism (both grammatical and social), historical linguistics and language change, and sociolinguistics.

I prefer to supervise dissertation topics in the above fields and/or in fields related to my research interests (as described elsewhere on this page), and am especially interested in supervising students on topics in Welsh grammar, change in the Welsh language and/or bilingualism in a minority language context. I am also willing to supervise research projects that align with my creative writing.