Eleanor Rye
Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics

Profile

Biography

Ellie joined the department in 2018 as Associate Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics.  She completed a PhD at the University of Nottingham and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Nottingham and East Anglia. Her research focusses primarily on place-names as sources of information about language, society and landscape in the past.

Career

• Lecturer
  University of York (2022-)
  
• Associate Lecturer
  University of York (2018-2022)
• Senior Research Associate
  University of East Anglia (2017-18)
• Research Fellow
  Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham (2014-17)

Departmental roles

• Admissions Tutor
• CITY College Subject Contact

Teaching

Undergraduate

• History of English I
• Middle English in Context
• English Place-names across Time and Space

Research

Overview

Current research:

From November 2017 to October 2018, I was place-names researcher on the project 'Lordship and landscape in East Anglia CE 400-800', a project investigating early medieval East Anglia. I continue to contribute to the project, exploring the place-name evidence for early medieval settlement, infrastructure, land-use and power structures across East Anglia.

Past research:

From November 2014 until October 2017, I was Research Fellow on 'Travel and Communication in Anglo-Saxon England', an interdisciplinary project investigating overland and riverine travel in Anglo-Saxon England using textual, archaeological, and place-name evidence. Combining archaeological and linguistic expertise, we were able both to identify previously unknown routes and to provide clearer definitions of their characteristics.

My doctoral research assessed the Scandinavian contribution to lexis used in late medieval place-naming. Through case-studies of areas with extensive evidence for Scandinavian language use during the Viking Age, I found that similar language-contact situations left very different traces in later dialects.

Collaborators

Stuart Brookes (University College London)

Tom Williamson (University of East Anglia)