Professor Christine James was born in the Rhondda but has lived in Cardiff for over thirty years. She is an academic who specialises mainly in Medieval and Early Modern Welsh literature, and in the Literature of the South Wales Valleys. She spent most of her career in the Department of Welsh at Swansea University, where she was Profesor and Head of Department when she retired in 2017. Christine is an experienced poet, and her poems have appeared in Barddas, Barn and Taliesin, among other publications. She won the National Eisteddfod Crown in 2005, and her first volume of poetry, rhwng y llinellau (Barddas, 2013), won the Welsh poetry category in the 2014 Wales Book of the Year competition. Christine was elected Archdruid of Wales for the period 2013–16, and is currently the Recorder of the Gorsedd – the first female to hold these positions. She edited the volume Cerddi Gwenallt: Y Casgliad Cyflawn (Gwasg Gomer, 2001), co-edited Taliesin with Manon Rhys between 2000 and 2009, and co-edited the volume Dagrau Tost: Cerddi Aber-fan (Barddas, 2016) with her husband, Professor E. Wyn James. They have three children and five grandchildren.
