Prestigious British Academy Award for Bangor Lecturer

Bangor University lecturer, Dr Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, from the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, has been given almost £90,000 to embark on a project that would make a case for studying contemporary Spanish culture and politics from a postcolonial perspective.

Dr Helena Miguélez-Carballeira’s success has come in the face of very strong competition: 323 applications were submitted and the British Academy has been able to make just 35 offers of award, giving a success rate of under 11% overall.  

Focusing on questions related to historical practice, representation of national identities and political and cultural repression, Dr Miguélez-Carballeira’s project seeks to drive forward a new understanding of contemporary Spain by seeing the country as an example of postcolonial conflict. Her project will engage with internal national politics in contemporary Spain at a time when pro-independence sentiment in sub-state nations such as Catalonia and the Basque Country is mounting.

Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Dr Jonathan Ervine has said that the award of the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship constituted "a highly prestigious a well-deserved form of recognition for Dr Miguélez-Carballeira's cutting edge research". He added that it "provides a prime example of the dynamic research culture that exists at Bangor University within both Hispanic Studies and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures as a whole".

Dr Miguélez-Carballeira has published widely on Spain’s internal national conflicts. The Galician-Portuguese translation of her monograph, Galician, a Sentimental Nation, has remained the best selling non-fiction book in Galicia since its publication. 

Publication date: 18 May 2015