Wales and the world: strengthening transatlantic ties

Joel Romero-Meredith

For a scholar who often begins presentations by showing audience members where to find Wales on the map, NAASWCH is a welcome change of pace. Short for the North American Association for the Study of Welsh History and Culture, its most recent gathering took place online and in person in Rio Grande, Ohio, from July 15–18.

Dan Rowbotham, director of the Madog Center for Welsh Studies, provided a warm and generous welcome to all. At the time of the previous meeting in 2018, so much was in transition. The United Kingdom had experienced two pivotal referendums (Brexit and Scottish independence), and, in the United States, we had gone through the first half of Donald Trump’s first term in office. But we had yet to experience Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister, the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the conference hiatus, or Trump 2.0.

Faced with Starmer’s island of strangers and Trump’s empire of isolation, the questions raised at the 2025 NAASWCH meeting have a renewed urgency. What does it mean to belong? How do you define national identity (or identities)? Who gets to decide? What accountability do we have toward our past? And how can that inform our present?

Identity

Tackling the question of identity head-on, Valerie Jackson-Hill (Texas A&M University) shared her moving documentary, Tiger Brides: Memories of Love and War from the G.I. Brides of Tiger Bay. Inspired by her husband’s heritage, the film delves into the stories of the women from Butetown, Cardiff, who married African American servicemen stationed in the city during and following World War II. Valerie’s question—Who gets to claim Welshness?—provided an important through-line as other presenters wrestled with Welsh colonial and imperial identity, from Patagonian settlers to the premiership of David Lloyd George.

Closely tied to this question of Welsh identity were two sessions led by Richard Wyn Jones (Cardiff University). In one session, he unpacked voting trends across Cymru and the United Kingdom. Later that evening, Sioned Williams, MS for South Wales West, joined him in conversation. They discussed the evolving political landscape in Wales leading up to next year’s Senedd elections, what inspired Sioned to go into politics, how voting intention and identity overlap, and strategies to better engage diverse Welsh communities and identity heading into the next election.

Sioned’s passion impressed me. When Richard posited the possibility of a Plaid-led government, he asked her how she would be pragmatic on governing priorities: “So, you can’t do everything at once. Maybe something like tackling child poverty will fall to the side.” Sioned broke in immediately: “Not if I have anything to do with it.” Her message to us that evening was clear: Power isn’t a tool to wield for your own advancement, but on the behalf of those who need it most. Although Richard (quite sensibly) kept a time limit on the questions, I think many of us could have stayed in conversation late into the night.

While it’s no surprise that the majority of participants had strong ties to Cymru, a contingent of undergraduate students from Michigan Tech University enlivened our discussions with their questions, comments, and perspectives. As I presented at five o’clock in the afternoon, I worried that my paper on “Preiddeu Annwn” (“The Spoils of Annwn”) would put them to sleep. I was delighted, however, when two of them approached me with questions on the Book of Taliesin and where to read more.

Balm for the soul

I have been to a few conferences now. Sometimes, you walk away struggling to feel that you got anything meaningful from the experience—like it’s nothing more than a line on your CV. That wasn’t the case at NAASWCH. It was a balm for my soul to see so many make the journey from Cymru, to hear the myriad paths that brought participants to a quiet corner of Appalachian Ohio, to be greeted in Cymraeg and get patient smiles as I stumbled through my small but growing vocabulary.

To learn more about NAASWCH, visit their site here.

Joel Romero-Meredith is a Welsh-descended writer from Michigan. He has a master’s degree in Arthurian studies from Bangor University and will be starting his PhD at Bangor in the fall of 2025. Having spent much of his life in Michigan, he now splits his time between Cymru and his husband’s native Argentina.