Professor Kirsty Hooper FRHistS
Professor of Hispanic Studies

Email: k dot hooper at warwick dot ac dot uk
Twitter: @booksonspain
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
Faculty of Arts Building
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
About
Kirsty joined Warwick in September 2012, after eight years at the University of Liverpool. Between 2012 and 2015, she was holder of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. From September 2020 - August 2023 she holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for the project Hispanic London: Culture, Commerce and Community in the Nineteenth-Century City.
Research interests
Kirsty is a specialist in Spanish, Anglo-Spanish and Galician cultural history since 1800. Her particular interests include the global nineteenth century, mobilities, genealogies, and microhistories.
Now published!
The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish ObsessionLink opens in a new window(Liverpool UP, 2020)
What did the Edwardians know about Spain, and what was that knowledge worth? The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession draws on a vast store of largely unstudied primary source material to investigate Spain’s place in the turn-of-the-century British popular imagination. Set against a background of unprecedented emotional, economic and industrial investment in Spain, the book traces the extraordinary transformation that took place in British knowledge about the country and its diverse regions, languages and cultures between the tercentenary of the Spanish Armada in 1888 and the outbreak of World War I twenty-six years later.
This empirically-grounded cultural and material history reveals how, for almost three decades, Anglo-Spanish connections, their history and culture were more visible, more colourfully represented, and more enthusiastically discussed in Britain’s newspapers, concert halls, council meetings and schoolrooms, than ever before. It shows how the expansion of education, travel, and publishing created unprecedented opportunities for ordinary British people not only to visit the country, but to see the work of Spanish and Spanish-inspired artists and performers in British galleries, theatres and exhibitions. It explores the work of novelists, travel writers, journalists, scholars, artists and performers to argue that the Edwardian knowledge of Spain was more extensive, more complex and more diverse than we have imagined.
Coming Soon!
- Modern Literatures in Spain: A Cultural History. Polity Books, November 2022. Co-authored with Jo Labanyi, Elena Delgado, Helena Buffery, and Mari José Olaziregi.
Books
- The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish ObsessionLink opens in a new window. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020.
- Mondariz-Vigo-Santiago: A Brief History of Galicia's Edwardian Tourist BoomLink opens in a new window [FULL TEXT!]. Mondariz: Fundacion Mondariz Balneario, 2013.
- Contemporary Galician Cultural Studies: Between the Local and the GlobalLink opens in a new window. New York: MLA, 2011. Co-ed. with Manuel Puga Moruxa.
- Writing Galicia into the World: New Cartographies, New PoeticsLink opens in a new window. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011.
- A Stranger in my Own Land: Sofia Casanova, a Spanish Writer in the European fin de siecleLink opens in a new window. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008.
Selected Essays and Book Chapters
- 'Rios, fontes, peiraos, and océanos: Hydropoetics and the Galician Cultural Imagination.' In Benita Sampedro Vizcaya and José Losada-Montero, eds. Rerouting Galician Studies: Multidisciplinary InterventionsLink opens in a new window. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017: 73-89.
- ‘Liverpool and the Luso-Hispanic World: Negotiating Global Histories at Empire’s End.’ In Akiko Tsuchiya and William Acree, eds. Empire’s End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic WorldLink opens in a new window. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2016: 34-59.
- 'A Tale of Two Empires? The Earl's Court Spanish Exhibition (1889).Link opens in a new window' [FULL TEXT] Modern Languages Open. October 2014. Read the follow-up blog.
- (2012) 'Revisitando as "novas cartografias" da cultura galega: lectura posnacionais, lecturas relacionaisLink opens in a new window' [FULL TEXT]. Galicia21 Vol. D (2012): 44-56.
Qualifications
- PGCert in Digital Humanities, University College London, 2015
- PGCert in Higher Education, University of Liverpool, 2009
- DPhil in Modern Languages, University of Oxford, 2003
- MSt in Slavonic Studies (Polish), University of Oxford, 1998
- BA (Hons) in Modern Languages (Spanish), University of Oxford, 1997
Drop-in Hour
I'm currently on leave; please email for an appointment.
Teaching (2018-19)
HP310: Spain and the Philippines at Empire's End
HP313: Cultural Connections, Digital Histories: Britain and the 19th-century Hispanic World