Diana Berruezo-Sánchez is an ICREA Research Professor at the UAB and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she held full-time positions as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Career Development Fellow of Balliol College, as well as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern Languages replacing the Chair of Spanish. She conducts an innovative line of research on the experiences of Black women and men, and their spaces for poetic and cultural negotiation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. She has secured international funding through highly competitive and prestigious fellowships and grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Newberry Library, the John Fell Fund, the Leverhulme Trust, and Balliol College. In 2022, she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to explore the cultural history of the Black African diaspora in Early Modern Spain.
Research interests
Currently, her projects aim to develop a new scholarly framework to reassess Europe’s past and its peoples, narrating the previously untold stories of cultural heritage created by Black singers, dancers, poets, and actors. With a focus on Spain and the broader Iberian world, her research promotes an understanding of survival through creativity, the construction of Blackness, and identity formation processes in the early modern period. She also leads interdisciplinary groups that explore Black diasporas through the lenses of History, Musicology, Literature, and Anthropology, contributing to the growing field of diaspora studies and bringing new perspectives on cultural exchange and diversity in early modern Europe. She previously specialized on early modern Spanish literature and cross-cultural influences, exploring how texts circulate across borders to form networks crucial to understanding literary traditions.
Selected publications
- Cortés M & Berruezo D 2025, 'Estudio, edición crítica y notas, El primer marqués de Astorga', Obras completas. Volumen X. Comedias, de Rojas F, Cuenca:, 2025 U Castilla La Mancha, pp 319–437.
Selected research activities
Projects and Grants
- PI of ERC CoG, The Cultural History of the Black African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (BADEMS): 9 researchers.
- PI of MICINN/AEI research project, The Making of Blackness: 18 researchers
Managerial Activities
Conferences and workshops
- The Making of Blackness Seminar: New Books in Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies (22 Apr)
- The Cultural Agency and Limits of Minority Groups in Early Modern Iberia: A Comparative Approach. Organisation of a two-day in person interdisciplinary seminar (UAB, 26–27 Jun)
- Defining Culture, Shaping Research. Organisation of a three-day online Research Workshop (UAB, 20–22 Oct)
- Org. of talks with experts in archival work: C Bejarano and A Mazuela (16 Jan), A García-Reidy (19 Mar), J Lewandownska (3 Apr)
Fieldwork
- Org. of archival fieldwork with team in Toledo (10–14 Feb), Valladolid–Simancas (7–11 Jul) and Seville (3–7 Nov)
Invited talks
- U Complutense de Madrid–25 Feb. In Conversation: N R. Jones, C Ireton, and D Berruezo-Sánchez on Afro-Iberian Studies
- U of Oxford–4 Mar. Black Voices in Early Modern Spanish Literature
- U of Cambridge–6 Mar. Black Multilingualism and Cultural Agency in Early Modern Iberia
- St Louis U in Madrid–11 Mar. The Archival Work at BADEMS
- U Valencia–26 Nov. Mujeres Afrodiaspóricas en el Atlántico Ibérico. Vidas, memorias y resistencias.
Research Panels
- Coordinator of the FLA panel at Agencia Española de Investigación
Outreach
- I joined NERVI, a cultural programme on TV3, Catalonia’s public broadcaster, for the roundtable, Black Cultures, Hidden Cultures? I si la nostra història fos una altra? Together with Catalan Black thinkers and activists, Tania Safura and Laida Mbemba, I presented what too often slips out of view.