Margaret Clunies Ross
Margaret Beryl Clunies Ross (born 24 April 1942) is a medievalist who was until her retirement in 2009 the McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research areas are Old Norse-Icelandic Studies and the history of their study. Since 1997 she has led the project of editing a new edition of the corpus of skaldic poetry. She has also written articles on Australian Aboriginal rituals and contributed to the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Life and career. Margaret Tidemann  was born in Adelaide, the eldest child of Ernest Phillips Tidemann, a dentist, and his wife Beryl Chudleigh Tidemann, a kindergarten teacher. She attended Walford House, now Walford Anglican School for Girls, until she was almost 17 and graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1962 with First Class Honours in English. She was influenced to study Old and Middle English and Old Norse by Ralph Elliott, whom the university appointed as she was starting the Honours course. She then completed a B.Litt. at Oxford University on an overseas scholarship from the University of Adelaide and a scholarship from Somerville  College. She then worked as a lecturer at St. Hilda's College and Lady Margaret Hall, and in 1968–69 visited the Arnamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen on a travelling fellowship. She became a lecturer at the University of Sydney in 1969, was appointed McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature in 1990 and in 1997 became Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies. She retired in 2009 and since then has been Honorary Professor in the Medieval and Early Modern Centre and Emeritus Professor of English. Her former husband was Major-General Adrian Clunies Ross, A.O., M.B.E., Chief of  Operations, Australian Army 1985-90, son of the influential veterinary scientist Sir Ian Clunies Ross. Honours. Clunies Ross was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg and is a Fellow ("arbetande ledamot") of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy. She is also an Honorary Research Associate of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. Clunies Ross was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1990. In August 2018 Clunies Ross was awarded the Icelandic Knight's Cross of the Order of the Falcon for her services to the field  of Old Icelandic studies.