Minerva Peinador
I am a postdoctoral researcher in cultural and literary studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany. After graduating in German Philology in Madrid, one day I left my native Castile behind to discover the world from Germany and look back at my own culture with fresh eyes. I completed master’s degrees in literary criticism and translation, alongside training in university teaching.
In neighbouring Austria, I navigated some of the twists and turns of academic life. Later, I traded Styria, with its Italian air, for the former East Germany, devoting myself to research and teaching in cultural studies at the University of Rostock.
Then I gave my globe a spin and joined a doctoral programme in Interdisciplinary Sociocultural Studies of Europe and Latin America at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. There—and in my studio flat overlooking a palm tree and a seemingly endless city—I immersed myself in memory studies, sharpened my social awareness, and learned to navigate pavements whose tiles had a will of their own, to converse, write and survive, and to play chess. All this took a toll on my health and finances, but not on my joy.
Back in the North, I earned my doctorate with Entre postmemoria y docuficción (Between Postmemory and Docufiction), an analysis of changing ways of coming to terms with the legacy of war and dictatorship in twenty-first-century Spain, at the intersection of civic demands for justice, poetic justice and the politics of memory. In 2023, I received the Career Paths Award from the German Association of Hispanic Studies for my project Mirá cómo nos escribimos, on representations of gender-based violence.
My work lies at the intersection of ethics and aesthetics in Hispanic and Francophone cultures, driven by a desire to name and make visible experiences of injustice, pain and beauty. I examine cultural expressions, contestations and representations shaped by global structural inequalities in a postmigrant, postcolonial and patriarchal world. I explore how they challenge us and invite us to take a stand. I investigate collective approaches to building community through affective bonds and memory, and explore forms of belonging and identity through communal musical practices.
In my current postdoctoral project, I ask whether, in a further twist, the sociocultural practices of Latin American collectives in Spain might bring about a world dis-order. I study their ways of imagining and building community, and their potential to transform their surroundings—and perhaps to decolonise Europe. We shall see.
What draws me to the Constelación is this interest in shared memories, affective bonds and collective practices of building community. You can find out more about my work on Academia.edu, ORCID, ResearchGate and LinkedIn.
