As we prepare for IMC 2026, we continue to fete our presenters at IMC 2025! In this series of guest posts, presenters at conferences hosted or empaneled by Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies briefly discuss their work, interests, and methods. Today, we welcome Kevin Waldron as a contributor. Kevin holds a BA in Writing and Theology from Clarks Summit University and is currently a master’s student in Language and Literature at Signum University. Kevin presented at the 2025 Leeds International Medieval Congress at the Ceræ-hosted session “Learning, Knowledge, And Awareness from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern, II: Recording, Revising, and Reworking Sources of Knowledge” with the paper “In Search of Lost Wisdom,” which he describes as “treatise on studying premodern languages and literature.” We are very grateful for his contribution.
1. Talk us through your paper at Leeds. What interested you in this topic?
My Leeds paper is centered around a quotation from King Alfred that broadened my academic studies from literature into language: that “there would be more wisdom in the land the more languages we knew.” As a high school English teacher, I found that students are struggling to connect to texts after they have been diluted for our current times, and wondered if we were taking interpretations in the wrong direction. Maybe the goal of education is to first return to one’s linguistic roots, engage with the flavor of language as it once was, and experience a tale worth telling time and time again. I have always been captivated by the preservation and transmission of ancient texts, and Alfred’s treatise provided a framework through which I could communicate the reasoning behind teaching and learning old languages once more.
2. What projects are you working on? What projects do you hope to be working on in the future?
I will be starting my master’s thesis soon, which will be the first significant scholarship focused on Geoffrey Bache Smith, an academic peer of Tolkien’s who deserves to be read on his own merits. His only published poetry, A Spring Harvest, is brimming with references to Middle English and older literature, and I cannot wait to unpack its pieces. In my free time, I am working on translating the remaining lines of Old English poetry and early monastic writings from England, and writing a prospective Leeds 2026 presentation regarding the skaldic influence on ekphrastic lines in Beowulf.
3. What book would you recommend to someone interested by your work at Leeds?
In order to understand the rich history behind language studies, I always recommend the work of Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales and the work of John Miles Foley, who honed in on Germanic languages like Old English. While I only briefly mentioned his work at Leeds, I drew heavily from scholars like Michael Nagler, who tell us that “culture does not survive on amusement value alone.” That is, there is likely more to a piece like Beowulf than its merit as a poem.
4. Where would you like to see your field going in the near future? Are there any areas you feel need more attention?
Considering its contributions to the English literature, Germanic philology is sorely understudied. We are in a situation against which Alfred warns, where we lose the footsteps of our ancestors because we were unwilling to follow their path in translation. Too many scholars study English and are unaware of its roots, or know nothing more than the importance of 1066 and C.S. Lewis believes that the student of English who does not know Old English remains all his life a child among real scholars of the literature.
5. And a combined question: if you have social media, where can we find you, and what are you reading for fun?
You can find my Instagram account @kevjwal, where I hope to be posting more about an upcoming Substack page, “Wrong with Plato,” which seeks to balance a yearning for older writings with a practical application for contemporary audiences.
As far as my fun reading goes, I am making my way through the medieval Germanic languages and currently studying Gothic and Wulfila’s Bible translation. I am also reading C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image and seeking to make sense of his medievalist approach.
Image credit: Detail from the Last Will and Testament of Alfred the Great, Add MS 82931, British Library.