Research in Hispanic Studies
Our diverse research covers a wide range of areas in Spanish and Latin American studies, from early modern Spanish literature to post-modern cartographies in Latin American film, from sensorial imagery in Latin American narrative to the Spanish Gothic. In the nationally conducted 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway was rated top in the UK for its 4*, 'world-leading' research publications (4* was the highest possible category).
Among our researchers are a former Rhodes scholar and a winner of the prestigious Conde de Cartagena research prize awarded by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española. Members of Hispanic Studies are active researchers, giving plenaries and conference papers internationally. We also sit on the boards of academic journals and awards schemes and collaborate in international research networks. Our research has attracted funding from prestigious award schemes, whilst our publications have appeared in the TLS, New York Review of Books and the New Statesman as well as in exhibition catalogues and international peer-reviewed academic journals. We have curated exhibitions in the UK and the US, organised seminars and conferences at home and abroad and presented workshops at the BFI at London’s Southbank and the IGRS.
Hispanic Studies comprises seven permanent members of staff, all of whom are active researchers and share interests in issues of representation and cultural studies. The following permanent members of staff are assisted by a number of part-time colleagues, several of whom are also active researchers.
Dr Tyler Fisher researches Golden Age Spain and early modern literature, the Spanish Inquisition, popular piety and devotional verse and twenty-first century Spanish microficción.
Dr Miriam Haddu focuses on Mexican cinema and visual arts, postmodern geographies in Latin American film and feminist studies.
Professor Abigail Lee Six is concerned with Spanish prose fiction from 1850 to the present day with a particular interest in feminism, Spanish Gothic and gender studies.
Dr Arantza Mayo’s research interests lie in the area of Hispanic Golden Age literature and visual arts, including Colonial America, as well as in 20th-century Bolivian literature and Latin American political poetry;
Dr Richard Pym's research involves pioneering work in the field of Golden Age Spanish society, literature and art, including a historical study of early modern Spain’s gypsies.
Dr Olivia Vázquez-Medina specializes in Spanish American literature from 1950 onwards, with a particular interest in representations of the body, medical discourses in fiction, and the aesthetics and politics of sensorial imagery in travel narratives.
Dr Sarah Wright researches modern and contemporary Spanish culture, theatre and film.
We welcome postgraduate researchers, and we offer excellent supervision for PhD and Masters by Research students in a variety of areas in Hispanic Studies, as well as, in tandem with other language-areas in the School, a range of topics in comparative literature and visual cultures. Topics presently being researched at postgraduate level in Hispanic Studies include 'Spatializing the Real and Imagined Havana in Visual Culture (1933-2010)'; ‘Memory and the Trauma of Fascism in Contemporary Spanish Narrative’; ‘Trauma in Spanish Film of the 1940s’; ‘Language as Disguise in the Novels of Javier Marías’ and ‘Art, Femicide and Space in Contemporary Mexico’.
We contribute to the School Seminar Series as well as to Hispanic Research Seminars. The prestigious annual David Vilaseca Memorial Lecture was established in October 2010 to honour the memory of a much loved colleague whose powerful intellectual legacy continues to inform and inspire research at the very highest levels internationally.
We are currently advertising a Santander Doctoral Scholarship in Hispanic Studies (deadiine 6th March 2013). For more information, visit: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/mllc/prospectivestudents/postgraduatestudy/home.aspx.|
Potential applicants for postgraduate study should contact the academics who are specialists in their areas of interest directly or by contacting Dr Sarah Wright, Director of Graduate Studies, sarah.wrightrhul.ac.uk|Enter the webpage content here.