He was extraordinary. He had all the scholarly knowledge that you could ask for, and at the same time he had this fabulous imagination. 

— Bonnie Wheeler, Director of Medieval Studies, Southern Methodist University

Stephan’s years at Southern Methodist University, where he studied from 1986 to 1991, had a profound effect on his personal and scholarly life. Working with scholars that included Bonnie Wheeler, Jeremy duQuesnay Adams and Julia Bolton Holloway, as well as with creative writing teacher C.W. Smith, he deepened his understanding of the medieval and Germanic world and also wrote the bulk of his first major novel, Rheingold. 

He went from SMU to Girton College, Cambridge, where he completed a Ph.D. directed by Paul Bibiere in 1995. 

After his passing, his family established the “Stephan Grundy Annual Lecture in Medieval Studies” held every year at SMU. An archival collection of his papers, dating from his high school and college years, has also been placed at the school. 

Stephan Grundy Annual Lectures

2026: Mary Rambaran-Olm, “The Fast & the Furious: The Formation of Race in Early England”

2025: Julia Bolton Holloway, “Tales within Tales: Honoring Stephan Grundy”

2024: Matthew Gabriele, “A Feast for Vultures and Wolves: The Ninth Century Carolingian Civil War and the End of a Medieval Empire”

2023: Irina Dumitrescu, “Beowulf, She Wrote: Contemporary Reimaginings of Beowulf by Women Authors”

2022: Shaun F.D. Hughes, “The Past on the Cusp of Tomorrow: Stephan Grundy, Rheingold and Beowulf”

Header illustration from Book of Kells, Folio 33r

Rune: Wunjo