Isabel Torres

Isabel Torres completed a BA (Latin and Spanish) at Queen’s University in 1988, obtaining a PhD in Spanish in 1994. She was appointed to a Golden Age lectureship  at Queen’s in 1991 and was Head of the Subject Area of Spanish and Portuguese Studies from 1997 - 2016.  She holds a personal Chair in Spanish Golden Age Literature.

Isabel holds the following editorial positions:  General Editor of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, member of the Tamesis International Advisory Board; member of the Hispanic Studies Editorial Board of Modern Languages Open.  

She has been President of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland 2013-16 and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Association (2016-18). She is an elected member of the executive committee  of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry.

Isabel was a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College (2010-18), a member of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 subpanel 28, Modern Languages and Linguistics, and has been appointed to subpanel 26, Modern Languages and Linguistics (2018-2021) for REF 2021.

Fellowships:

Corresponding Fellow ('miembro correspondiente') of the Real Academia Española (2016-)

Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2019-)

Fellow of the British Academy (2020 -)

Published Work:

Isabel has produced a significant body of published work across the broad field of Golden Age literary studies, authoring essays on early modern theatre, prose and poetry. Her major contribution has been in the field of Renaissance and Baroque poetics. Her monograph on the topic, Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age. Eros, Eris and Empire (2013), builds upon her 2006 study, The Polyphemus Complex. Rereading the Baroque Mythological Fable (Liverpool University Press, 2006). Other relevant publications include the edited collections: Rewriting Classical Mythology in the Hispanic Baroque (Tamesis, 2007); Ars Eloquentiae. Essays on Early Modern Poetry and Art (BHS, Liverpool, 2009); Spanish Golden Age Poetry in Motion (co-edited with Jean Andrews) (Tamesis, 2014); a co-edited double special issue of BSS entitled Imaginary Matters (2016),and the co-edited volume of essays Studies on Spanish Poetry in Honour of Trevor J. Dadson. Entre los siglos de Oro y el siglo XXI (2019). 

Supervision:

Isabel has supervised a range of Masters and doctoral theses to successful completion and directed a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. She welcomes doctoral and post-doctoral applications from suitably-qualified candidates across  the broad spectrum of early modern Spanish literature and culture. The following fields are, therefore, of indicative interest only:

• Renaissance and Baroque poetics: interrogated within the context of Renaissance Humanism, informed by sensitivity to the role of Classical theoretical and literary models and/or taking into account modern critical theories as/when appropriate.
• Golden Age comedia: theory and practice; subject to a range of methodological and interdisciplinary approaches; viewed as aesthetic response to the contradictory currents of containment and subversion (the crises of authority and control) which characterised the socio-historical and religious context of counter-Reformation Spain.
• Classical Heritage: especially the transvaluation of Graeco-Roman mythology in early modern literature and culture; reception studies.
• Early Modern Spanish Cultural Studies

Isabel was a shortlisted finalist in the Times Higher Education Awards, 2016, in the 'Outstanding Research Supervisor' category: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/jun/08/what-makes-a-great-phd-supervisor

Isabel is committed to research-led teaching and has offered undergraduate courses on all the major genres of the early modern period – poetry, drama and prose (the Picaresque novel, Cervantes’ novelas ejemplares and Don Quijote). Specialist optional courses include: World as Stage (level 2) and Rewriting Love in the Renaissance (level 3). She also enjoys and is active in language class delivery, and over the course of her career has taught language from ab initio through to final year.

At postgraduate level she contributed to the MA in Languages: 'Research Methods', 'Advanced Language' and  various specialist literary options and is currently involved in supervision on the MRes programme. She has supervised Masters-level dissertations on a range of topics relating to Golden Age literature and culture.

Isabel has been external examiner at undergraduate and taught postgraduate level in the Universities of Nottingham, King’s College London, University College Cork, University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge.

Isabel was privileged to receive a Queen's University Teaching Award in 2011 in the category of ‘Sustained Excellence'.