Siân Echard

Siân Echard is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Arts. She completed her graduate work at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1990 and has been at UBC since then. Her academic profile shows consistent engagement with medieval literary studies and book history.

Professor Echard is a medievalist and book historian whose research interests span Book History, Digital Humanities, Media Studies, and Medieval and Early Modern Literatures. She has particular expertise in twelfth-century Anglo-Latin literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie, Arthurian literature, the works of John Gower, and the post-medieval reception and transmission of medieval texts. Her scholarly work demonstrates a sustained fascination with how the preservation and presentation of text—on the page, in the archive, and in the digital world—affects textual reception and discussion.

Her recent publications reveal a consistent scholarly trajectory toward understanding manuscript culture, textual transmission, and the intersection of medieval studies with digital humanities. Echard has co-authored a history of the book in Britain and is currently working on a study of facsimiles of medieval manuscripts from the early modern period to the present. Her academic contributions include major publications such as Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition (1998), The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature (2011), A Companion to Gower (2004), Printing the Middle Ages (2008), and as general editor of The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain (2017).

• Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• A Companion to Gower (D.S. Brewer, 2004)
• Printing the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
• The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature (University of Wales Press, 2011)
• The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017)
• The Book in Britain: A Historical Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019)

Professor Echard teaches undergraduate courses including ENGL 100, where she explores literary traditions and contemporary responses to medieval texts. Her current research focuses on facsimiles of medieval manuscripts across historical periods, continuing her exploration of how textual presentation shapes reception and interpretation.