Biography
Niamh Kehoe is the Rebecca Marsland Lecturer in English at St Hilda’s College. Her research interests lie predominantly in Old and early Middle English literature, with a particular focus on hagiographic and devotional literature. Her current research explores two areas of early medieval English hagiography: (1) humour and the changing presentations of holiness in the hagiography produced in pre- and early post-Conquest England and (2) the intersection of functionality and identity in the surviving corpus of the South English Legendary manuscripts.
In the past, Niamh has held positions as Lecturer at the University of Bonn, at Heinrich Heine University (Düsseldorf), and at Newcastle University. She has also taught at Trinity College, Dublin, and at University College Cork.
At St Hilda’s, Niamh teaches Old and Middle English (Prelims Paper 2; FHS Course I Paper 2), and English Language (Prelims Paper 1a).
Niamh was co-editor of the TOEBI Newsletter from 2020-2022, and reviewer for the Years Work in English Studies (Old English – various sections) from 2020-2023.
Articles
- “Humour, Horror, and Violence in Ælfric of Eynsham’s Passion of St Vincent.” Accepted and forthcoming in 2025 with the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.
- "Unsaintly Behaviour? The Old English Eustace and Models of Holiness in Early Medieval England.” The Review of English Studies. 73:312, 2022, pp. 809-824.
- "The Importance of Being Foolish: Reconstruction of the Pagan and Saint in Ælfric’s Life of St Cecilia”, SELIM Journal Vol. 23, 2018. 1-26.
Edited Collections
- Niamh Kehoe. Ed. English Studies: Special Issue on ‘Emotion, Morality, and Exemplarity in Old English Literature.’ English Studies 105:3, 2024, pp. 333-498.
Positions
- Lecturer in English
Subjects
- English
