Memorial Fund Established to Remember a True Welsh Great

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Swansea University will celebrate Hywel Teifi Edwards’s unique contribution to Welsh culture on Friday afternoon, 10 August 2012, on its stand on the maes of the National Eisteddfod in the Vale of Glamorgan.

A special reception to launch a memorial fund in memory of Hywel Teifi will be held at 12.30pm in the company of his wife, Aerona Edwards, and their son, the broadcaster and honorary fellow of Swansea University, Huw Edwards.

The Eisteddfod will be an appropriate place to launch the fund as Hywel Teifi was an authority on the history of the National Eisteddfod, a very keen supporter of the festival and a member of the Eisteddfod Council and Gorsedd y Beirdd for many years.

The main aim of establishing the fund is to create a PhD scholarship which will be offered to promising individuals who wish to study in one of the following research fields of great interest to Hywel Teifi, namely 19th Century Welsh Literature, the history of the National Eisteddfod, the Welsh language, the village and the community, Welsh politics, or sport, media and drama in Wales.

As well as funding a scholarship, the aim is also to create a permanent memorial to Hywel Teifi which will be clearly placed in Academi Hywel Teifi, an institution created by Swansea University in 2010 in memory of the University’s former Professor of Welsh.

Swansea University also sponsors the Hywel Teifi Edwards memorial lecture which will be given this year by Professor Gareth Williams on the subject ‘Cythraul y Canu yn Oes Aur y Corau Mawr’. The lecture will be held on Thursday 9 August 2012 in the Literature Pavilion at 11am and Dr Gwenno Ffrancon will hold chair.

Director of Academi Hywel Teifi, Dr Gwenno Ffrancon said: ‘It’s wonderful to have the opportunity again in the Eisteddfod this year to ensure that the memory of Hywel Teifi’s life and work is kept alive. Through the work of Academi Hywel Teifi, Swansea University is keen to ensure that the areas of research that were so productive for Hywel remain to be researched by new generations of academics. Setting up a memorial fund and a PhD scholarship in his name is a way of assisting the work of realising that aim.”’

Huw Edwards added: “We as a family are very grateful for this recent development by Swansea University which builds on my father’s work and contribution and is a fitting memorial to him. We hope the fund will be strongly supported and that new opportunities will arise to academics in future as a result of its establishment.’’