Oliver Padel

Oliver James Padel is an English medievalist and toponymist specializing in Welsh and Cornish studies. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge. and Visiting Professor of Celtic at the University of the West of England. Padel was born in 1948, the son of John Hunter Padel and his wife Hilda (née Barlow), daughter of Sir Alan Barlow, 2nd Baronet and his wife Nora, (née Darwin), through whom he is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. His older sister is the poet Ruth Padel. He was educated at University College School, Hampstead, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, whence he graduated with a BA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in 1970. He was subsequently awarded an M.Litt. for his thesis on the inscriptions of Pictland by the University of Edinburgh in 1972. In 1992, he took a Litt.D. for his work on Cornish place-names. He was a founding member of staff of the Institute of Cornish Studies (in the Charles Thomas era) from 1972 to 1988. In 1988–90 he had a temporary post in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNaC) at Cambridge University while Patrick Sims-Williams was on research leave, followed by posts in the Department of History and Welsh History at the University of Aberystwyth and at the Cornwall Record Office. In 1994, he was appointed University Lecturer in Celtic Literature in ASNaC, replacing the former incumbent, Patrick Sims-Williams.