The HDH2017 plenary speakers
Juan Luis Suárez
Director of CulturePlex Lab and Professor of Hispanic Studies at Western University (Canada). He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Salamanca and in Hispanic Studies from the University of McGill (Canada). His research deals with cultural complexity and the theory of complexity, digital humanities, technologies of humanism, the Hispanic baroque, as well as globalization and new literatures. He investigates Big Data and its applications in the field of Humanities. He has directed large international projects and is the author of many works in which he addresses these problems.
Laura Borràs Castanyer
Laura Borràs Castanyer holds a degree in Catalan Philology (1993) and a doctor cum laude in Romance Philology (1997) by the University of Barcelona for the thesis Formes de la Follia a l’Edat Mitjana. Comparative texts of literary texts and iconographic representations. With title of European doctor (1997) and extraordinary prize (1998) of the Division of Human and Social Sciences of the University of Barcelona. His fields of interest are multiple and varied, from medieval literature to the latest electronic literature, through the interrelations between the miniature and the text in the context of medieval madness or the study of the myth of Don Juan in literature, Music and film and the classics in general. He has published numerous books, articles and works on contemporary literature, theater, cinema and literature, many of which include, notably, a reflection on writing and reading in the digital age and the study of new electronic textualities. She has been awarded with the Distinction of Young Researcher of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2001-2005) and since 2000 she has been in charge of the HERMENEIA research group consolidated by the Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR 2009-529, since 2005).
Ángela María Pérez Mejía
She directs the cultural work of the Bank of the Republic in Colombia, which includes 24 cultural centers with 19 public libraries. She was director of the Luís Ángel Arango Library, leading center of this cultural work. For ten years she taught Latin American literature at Brandeis University, where she also directed the Center for Latin American Studies. She holds a BA in Journalism from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York.
Her book The Geography of Difficult Times received the Casa de la Américas award in 2000. In addition to numerous publications, particularly on the subject of travel literature, buccaneers in the Caribbean and genre in Latin American literature, she is co-author of the film script Rodrigo D, winner of the Latin American Film Festival in New York and selected in the Festival of Cannes the same year.