Dr Irene Fernandez-Ramos
Postdoctoral Research Assistant 'Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspective Of and Through Al-Andalus' (UKRI 2023-2028)
Email: i.fernandezramos@qmul.ac.ukRoom Number: Bancroft 1.25
Profile
Irene is a Digital Cultural Studies and Creative Industries scholar working at the intersection of folklore, digital memory and queer theory.
She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Assistant of the ERC-Starting Grant project ‘Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspectives Of and Through Al-Andalus’ (2023-2024), funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The project examines the intersection of historical events, politicized narratives, nostalgia for lost empires, cultural diversity, and violent actions in the realm of digital media.
Her current research examines how tradition and folklore are mobilised in contemporary Spanish music to negotiate historical gaps and construct affective infrastructures for living through political, ecological and social crisis. Her work combines digital methods and cultural theory.
She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies focused on Palestinian theatre, spatial politics and the embodied experience of immobility. Her work has been published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, Theatre Survey, and Commonwealth Essays and Studies, among other journals, and she has contributed chapters to edited volumes with Routledge
She has been a member of the Research Network “Memory Studies Association” and the Centre for Palestinian Studies (SOAS), an Associated researcher at MediaLab Prado Madrid and a member of the AHRC-funded research project “Imagining Jerusalem”.
She has worked for five years as the Head of Arts for the independent literary publication “La Gran Belleza” and as a project manager and evaluator for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as well as the European Research Executive Agency and the European Education and Culture Executive Agency.
Research
Research Interests:
- Cultural Studies
- Digital Media and Cultures
- Queer Theory
- (Digital) Folklore
- Memory Studies
- Spatial practices
- Affect and Digital Emotions
- Music
Publications
Book Chapters
- (with Karima Laachir) “The Maghrebi Multilingual Novel” In George Joffe (eds.), Routledge Handbook on the Modern Maghrib, Oxon: Routledge.
- "Women's Bodies as Spaces of Otherness in Contemporary Palestinian Theatre". In Najib Mohtari (eds.), Decentering Patterns of Otherness: Towards an Asymmetrical Transcendence of Identity in Postcolonial MENA’, Rabat: Université International de Rabat.
Journal Articles
- (with Karima Laachir) "How Did You Get Here? The Aestheticization of the Refugee Journey towards Europe." In Journal of Intercultural Studies, volume 46
- (with Rayya El Zein, George Potter and Gabriel Varghese) "BDS and Palestinian theatre making: a call for debate within the discipline of theatre and performance studies." Theatre Survey 59:3
- "The Limits of Authenticity and the "Burden of Representation: Palestinian Theatre on the British Stage". Commonwealth Essays and Studies Journal, Vol 39 nº2
- "Performing Immobility in Contemporary Palestinian Theatre". Middle East – Topic & Arguments Vol 5 (2015): Periphery.
- "Storytelling, Agency and Community-building through Playback Theatre in Palestine". SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Vol 7 (Autumn 2014).
Editor
- (with Alexandria Milton) SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, issue on “From the Speech to the Act: Performativity on the Margins”, Vol 7
Online publications
2013. “Engaging with Resistance – What Else? A Conversation between Kristin Flade and Irene Fernández Ramos” The Aesthetics of Applied Theatre (Freie Universität Berlin)