Warwick Hispanic Studies' Alison Ribeiro de Menezes is in Dublin this weekend (2-4 October) for the ISLA Irish, Spanish, Latin American Literary Festival hosted by Dublin's Instituto Cervantes. Writers, readers and critics from all three places will come together for panels, interviews, conversations and presentations. Check out the programme here!

Dr Michela Coletta (Hispanic Studies) is co-hosting a one-day conference at Senate House in London on Friday 22 May 2015. Nature and Knowledge in Latin America: New Historical Perspectives will bring together different historical perspectives on the study of nature in Latin America from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. It will approach the topic of historical understandings of landscapes, environment, natural resources, natural disasters, flora and fauna from interdisciplinary historical perspectives. Papers will contribute to our understanding of how scholars and communities in Latin America have historically engaged with the nature and the landscapes surrounding them, and the relationship of such engagement to broader intellectual, social, political and economic currents.

Professor Alison Ribeiro de Menezes will give the keynote address, 'Raising Spectres: Cultural Memory and the Necropolitics of Spain's Civil War Dead,' at a one-day conference on Competing Victimhoods in Spain and Italy to be hosted by the Humanities Institute at University College Dublin, on 22 May 2015.

Click here to see the full conference programme (PDF).

Associate Professor of Hispanic and Caribbean Studies, Fabienne Viala, is travelling to the Caribbean as a special guest at the inauguration on 10th May 2015 of the Memorial ACTe, the first public slavery memorial on the island of Guadeloupe. Click on the news headline above to read more!

As part of Warwick’s day-long celebration on 10 March of International Women’s Day, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures congratulated its large cohort of students who recently graduated from Warwick’s 2015 ‘Sprint’ female personal and professional development programme. In thanking the students for their participation and commitment, Dr. Joanne Lee spoke of the continung need to develop female leaders, especially those with multi-lingual skills and real international experience.

Hispanic Studies are delighted to welcome Visiting Associate Professor Helena González Fernández to Warwick. Helena is a specialist in Galician Studies, contemporary literature and culture and gender studies at the Universitat de Barcelona, where she directs the Centre Dona I Literatura. She will be in Warwick from March to May 2015.

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures is pleased to offer three bursaries to suitably qualified MA applicants for the 2015-16 academic year.

An exciting and illuminating alumni careers evening, organised by students Nung Yang and Jessica Hargreaves for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, was attended by 74 students from all undergraduate years. Invited speakers, including several graduates, gave presentations on the wide variety of career options available for modern linguists, before networking discussions continued over the obligatory pizza!

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures was highly successful in the most recent national research exercise, the 2014 REF, with our research outputs ranked 5th in the UK. 79.7% of our work, and 100% of our environment, was judged to be world-leading or internationally excellent. With three of the four submissions ranked above us specialising entirely in Linguistics outputs, we are one of the very best UK institutions for comprehensive research in modern languages. This output ranking also places us above all other Russell Group universities, including Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, King's College London, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, and UCL. The School is also top-ranked for Modern Languages overall in the Midlands region.

Professor Seán Hand, Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, commented: ‘We are delighted with this strong endorsement of our research capabilities across the whole of our School, in French, German, Italian and Hispanic Studies. As we do not pursue research in Linguistics, the proportion of our outputs deemed to be in the highest possible category of 'world-leading' also places us just behind Cambridge and Kent (which both also included Linguistics in their overall return). And our output's 'intensity' ranking (which takes account of the proportion of staff entered into the exercise), again ignoring Linguistics returns, places us 2nd in the UK, just behind Cambridge. In conjunction with our University’s overall rankings, where we are rated the 7^th best research university in the UK, and with our status as the current Times/Sunday Times University of the Year, this result really emphasizes how Warwick offers a truly world-class research-intensive environment for the comprehensive study of modern languages.’

Hispanic Studies is delighed to invite you to a lecture by Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa on Tuesday 25 November at 6pm, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre. All welcome!

A competition has been launched to find a new, original photograph to front the School's new webpages!

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick again welcomes applications for the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme.

The Modern Languages subjects at Warwick achieved some impressive rankings in the 2015 Complete University Guide, published 12 May 2014. French moved up one place to 3^rd, and now sits above Cambridge and just behind Oxford. German moved up to 5^th position, on the heels of Oxford, Cambridge, and Exeter. Italian is in 7^th position, on equal footing with St. Andrew’s. Our new Department of Hispanic Studies does not yet feature in these tables.

Dr Christabelle Peters (Hispanic Studies / IAS) is now a member of the research team for the UNESCO project ‘A Rota do Escravo’ based in the Centro de Estudos sobre África, Ásia e América Latina at the Universidade Técnica in Lisbon.

Prof. Glave's Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh has been named a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Nonfiction. Many congratulations!!!

We are delighted to announce that the Language Centre and the Hispanic Studies department have been certified by Instituto Cervantes to allow students to take the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE). These diplomas, administered on behalf of Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, help to provide non-native Spanish speakers with a legitimate and certified method of proving their proficiency in the Spanish language.

Warwick Hispanic Studies are delighted to welcome 2014 Leverhulme Visiting Professor Thomas Glave, who will be joining the department from January-December 2014. Click on the headline above to find out more about Professor Glave and his work!