Grace Khuri recently completed the first doctoral thesis on J.R.R. Tolkien ever done at the University of Oxford: 'Tolkien's Eldar Edda: Old Norse Myth, the Great War, and the Writing of the "Silmarillion"' (2025). It examined the symbiotic influences of apocalyptic elements from Ragnarǫk ('Doom of the Gods') and events of the First World War on The Book of Lost Tales (c. 1917-19), the earliest iteration of The Silmarillion (1977). Before her D.Phil, Grace earned her B.A. in English Language and Literature (Course II, Medieval strand; First Honours) and M.Phil (Medieval English 550-1550; Distinction) from Merton College, Oxford. During these degrees, she studied Old and Middle English literature, and Old Norse myths and sagas. She has taught on Beowulf (Christ Church), Tolkien's mythology (St. Anne's and St. Catherine's), and supervised undergraduate dissertations on Tolkien (Exeter College, Magdalen College). She has lectured in the English Faculty, for the Oxford Tolkien Network, and at the Christopher Tolkien at 100: A Celebration at the Weston Library. Her public outreach includes speaking at Tolkien or fantasy events at the Bradford Literary Festival (2022, 2023) and Oxford Literary Festival (2023, 2025), an interview with BBC Culture (2022), and several podcasts on Tolkien with Oxford University Podcasts: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/grace-khuri. After co-convening the Tolkien seminars for two terms, she contacted Warner Brothers' and interviewed Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Phillipa Boyens, at Merton College. Grace is currently working on converting her thesis into a monograph. Website: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/grace-khuri.
grace.khuri@ell.ox.ac.uk
Tolkien-related Publications
(2026) 'Lexical Palimpsests: Old English and Old Norse Loan Words in J.R.R. Tolkien's 1917 Gnomish Lexicon' (forthcoming)
(2026) 'G.B. Smith at Oxford and at War: A Lost History?'. In J.R.R. Tolkien and G.B. Smith: With the Wind in Our Ears, ed. Giuseppe Pezzini (London: Palgrave Macmillan), Chapter 2.
(2023) Review: The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien, edited by Richard Ovenden and Catherine McIlwaine (Oxford: Bodleian Publishing, 2022). Tolkien Studies, Vol. 20.
(2019) '"Of Songs that Die Not": A Quiet Hero of the Somme,' The Poor Print, Iss. 47 ('Sacrifice'):
https://thepoorprint.com/2019/11/03/of-songs-that-die-not-a-quiet-hero-of-the-somme/
(2018) 'Saving Imagination: Myth and Legend in WWI Poetry,' The Poor Print, Iss. 35 ('Fantasy'):
https://thepoorprint.com/2018/10/27/saving-imagination-myth-and-legend-in-world-war-i-poetry/
