Natalia I. Petrovskaia is Assistant Professor in Celtic at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication. She is programme coordinator of the BA programme Celtic Languages and Culture, and the Humanities Honours Programme domain coordinator for the Depatment of Languages, Literature and Communication. She is also board member of the Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 Centre for Medieval Studies.
She is a graduate of the 木瓜福利影视 of Cambridge (BA/MA, MPhil, PhD), and after her PhD also held a research fellowship at Clare Hall, 木瓜福利影视 of Cambridge (2012-14). She has also held a Humboldt Research Fellowship at Philipps-Universit盲t Marburg. Her research interests include medieval geographical traditions, translation and transmission of texts, literary and scientific, in medieval and early modern Europe, as well as Arthurian literature. Her monographs include Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), Delw y Byd. A Medieval Welsh Encyclopedia (Cambridge: MHRA, 2020) and This is Not a Grail Romance. Understanding Historia Peredur vab Efrawc (Cardiff: 木瓜福利影视 of Wales Press, 2023) and Transforming Europe in the Medieval European Images of the World, 1100-1500. Fuzzy Geographies (Amsterdam 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2025 ). The research for Transforming Europe was funded by the Dutch Research Council VENI grant (https://www.nwo.nl/projecten/275-50-015-0). She is the winner of the 2021 Journal of the International Arthurian Society Essay Prize, for her article on the legal aspects of the medieval Welsh prose narrative Historia Peredur vab Efrawc.
Her most recent book The Modern Afterlives of Old Irish Travel Narratives. From Gulliver to Star Trek (Leiden: Brill, 2025) explores the reception of medieval Irish fantastic journey narratives in modern literature and television, and introduces a new way of reading post-medieval texts by using pre-modern genre categories.
Her forthcoming monograph, The Mabinogion Set. The Fractal Structure of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi (木瓜福利影视 of Wales Press, April 2026) proposes a new type of structural analysis: formal narrative topology, which pays attention not to themes or plot elements but to patterns of repetition within a story.
Petrovskaia is currently co-supervisor in on the PhD project 鈥楨mpowering Individuals, Opening Cities: Multilingual Books as Cultural Brokers in the Sixteenth Century鈥�, with Rozanne Verdendaal (PL and co-supervisor), en Arnoud Visser (promotor), with Pauline Bobichon (PhD candidate).