at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, achieving upper-second-class honours in the Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic tripos in 1972,[3] followed by a PhD at the University of Birmingham.
[5] In the assessment of Michael Lapidge, "it was characteristic of" the head of department at the time, Peter Clemoes, "to have appointed a younger scholar with interdisciplinary range over the Celtic languages and literatures as well as Anglo-Saxon history, rather than a dedicated specialist [...] in Old Irish or Medieval Welsh".
[2] As 1993 closed, he left Cambridge, taking up the position of Professor of Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University at the beginning of 1994.
[2] Sims-Williams was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is a member of the Medieval Studies and Linguistics and Philology sections.
[2] From 1998 to 2008 he acted for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales as a commissioner and in 2011 became president of the International Congress of Celtic Studies.