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BA Spanish Philology, BA Italian Philology, M.A. Romance Philology, PhD Spanish Philology (University of Barcelona)

 

Research

Dr Diana Berruezo-Sánchez is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Audrey Lumsen Kouvel and Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago for the academic year 2023-2024. At Oxford, she held a four-year full-time position as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Career Development Fellow of Balliol College, as well as a two-year lectureship at the sub-faculty of Spanish replacing the former King Alfonso XIII Chair of Spanish.

 

She is currently conducting an innovative line of research on the black African diaspora in early modern Spain. Her interests lie in exploring the active diasporic experiences of Black women and men, and their spaces for poetic and cultural negotiation. Her work aims at advancing the underexplored field of Black poets and Black poetic voices in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Spain. Her forthcoming monograph, Black Voices in Early Modern Spanish Literature (1500-1750) (OUP, 2024) explores the cultural agency of Black women and men and the way their presence contributed collectively and anonymously to the era’s literary texts, and her forthcoming article at Bulletin of the Comediantes explores the silenced representations of Black poets in early modern Spain.

 

Dr Berruezo-Sánchez is the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council funded project, The Cultural History of the Black African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (BADEMS), and PI of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, The Making of Blackness. She has led an interdisciplinary group of scholars (History, Musicology, Literature and Anthropology) working on the African diaspora in Iberia for which she was awarded the John Fell Fund Research Grant and organised a series of research workshop Black African’s Agency in Early Modern Spain and Black Iberia. She co-lead with Prof Elena Lombardi (Balliol College) a research project on invisibilities, Hiding in Plain Sight, funded by the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute, and brought together scholars of various disciplines, such as Mathematics, Philosophy, Astronomy, Literature, and Engineering, to discuss what is the invisible in different academic fields.  

 

Prior to that, she specialized in the area of early modern Spanish literature, particularly in connection with Italian sources, on which she conducted her PhD thesis and published extensively. This former line of research allowed her to explore the ways in which literary texts circulate beyond their national borders, creating a network of influences that is key to the understanding of the development of literary traditions. 

 

Diana welcomes PhD students interested in conducting research in areas related to Blackness and Black diasporas in Iberia. 

 

Teaching

Former tutor in Spanish at Balliol College, and tutor for Golden Age Literature (paper VII and X, seminars and lectures) for the FHS.

 

Selected publications

Books

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Book Chapters

  • “La antología de Francesco Sansovino y sus novellieri ante la censura: los casos de Giovanni Boccaccio y Masuccio Salernitano”, María José Vega (ed.), Callar el saber. Red de investigación Saberes humanísticos y formas de vida, Madrid, Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018, pp. 149-172.
  • “Masuccio en Europa”, Atti del convegno “I novellieri italiani e la loro influenza sulla cultura europea del Rinascimento e del Barocco”, Turin, Torino aAccademia University Press, 2015, pp. 674-688.
  • “El primer marqués de Astorga de Rojas Zorrilla en el Ms. 16711 de la BNE”, Rodríguez Cáceres, M., Marcello, E. y Pedraza, F., La comedia española en sus manuscritos, Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Cuenca, 2014, pp. 247-262 [in collaboration with Mar Cortés].
  • “Entre alcahuetas anda el juego. La francesilla de Lope de Vega y dos novelas de Masuccio Salernitano”, Bègue, Alain y Herrán Alonso, Emma (dir.), Pictavia aurea. Actas del IX Congreso de la Asociación Internacional “Siglo de Oro”, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2013, pp. 747-754.
  • “Sobreviviendo a la censura: Masuccio Salernitano en las letras castellanas”, Navarrete Navarrete, María Teresa y Soler Gallo, Miguel (eds.), El eterno presente de la literatura. Estudios literarios de la Edad Media al Siglo XIX, Roma, Aracne Editrice, 2013, pp. 97-106.
  • “El conocimiento y la experiencia: dos formas de aprendizaje en el Libro de Apolonio”, Literatura medieval y renacentista en España: Líneas y pautas, Salamanca, La Semyr, 2012, pp. 377-386.
  • “Il Novellino de Masuccio Salernitano en algunas comedias de Lope y Calderón”, Sònia Boadas, Félix Ernesto Chávez y Daniel García Vicens (eds.), La tinta en la clepsidra. Fuentes, historia y tradición en la literatura hispánica, Barcelona, PPU, 2012, pp. 139-149.
  • “La literatura como tapiz. A propósito de la línea Boccaccio-Masuccio-Mateo Alemán”, Caballero-Alías, Pilar, Chávez, Félix Ernesto y Ripoll Sintes, Blanca (eds.), Del verbo al espejo. Reflejos y miradas de la literatura hispánica, Barcelona, PPU, 2011, pp. 55-65.

Other Publications

  • ‘Reversing Invisibility: Enslaved Black Africans in Early Modern Spain’, The Oxford Polyglot, 2 (2018-19).