Professor Gareth Lloyd Evans

My primary field of research is Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and I have secondary research interests in Old and Middle English literature. I am particularly interested in questions of gender, sexuality, and emotion, and of identity more broadly. I am also interested in questions of poetics and style. I am author of Men and Masculinities in the Sagas of Icelanders (Oxford University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Masculinities in Old Norse Literature (D. S. Brewer, 2020). 

My current research focuses on the representation of emotion in Old Norse literature. I am working on a monograph entitled The Poetics of Emotion in Old Norse Saga Narrative (under contract with Boydell and Brewer) and am co-editing two collections of essays (Saga Emotions, forthcoming with Manchester University Press, and New Studies on Emotion in Old Norse Literature, under contract with Brepols). I am also convenor and Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded 'Old Norse Emotion Network', which will run from 2024 to 2026.

Other projects include a co-edited special issue of the journal English Studies on 'Deconstructing Masculinities in Old English Literature' that will appear later this year, and an international conference - 'Affiliations: Towards a Theory of Cross-Temporal Comparison' - that took place at St Anne's College, Oxford, in May 2024.

I am a Council Member of the Viking Society for Northern Research and am one of the editors of its journal, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research; I also serve as Saga-Book's reviews editor. I am a steering committee member and treasurer of the Gender and Medieval Studies Group, and am a member of the editorial board for the Brepols book series, Gender and Sexuality in the Global Middle Ages. I am also co-convenor of the Old Norse in Oxford Research Seminar.

I welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students. I am currently supervising one doctoral student - Grace O'Duffy -  who works on sexual violence against women in Old Norse literature. For further information about studying Old Norse at graduate level at Oxford, click here.