Marta Simó Comas

Dr. Marta Simó Comas is a Lecturer in Spanish Culture at the School of Literature and Languages, University of Reading, where she teaches modern and contemporary Spanish narratives, cultural history, and translation. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Exeter and a Lic.Fil. from the Universitat de Barcelona, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Her research focuses on two main areas: contemporary Spanish narrative and the cultural history of Spain’s Transition to democracy. Her work explores realism, metafiction, gender, identity, and the uncanny in literature, with a particular emphasis on authors such as José Luis Sampedro, Marta Sanz, Cristina Fernández Cubas, and Patricia Esteban Erlés. She also investigates the role of female publishers like Esther Tusquets and Rosa Regàs in shaping cultural and feminist discourse during the post-Franco era.

The analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong interdisciplinary trend, combining literary criticism with cultural studies, gender theory, and political history. Her work consistently examines how narrative forms reflect and critique socio-political realities, especially under neoliberalism and during periods of democratic transformation.

She actively supervises postgraduate research and has completed supervision of at least one PhD student. She was a member of an international research network on female publishers (2015–2019) and contributes to the EDI-RED database of Ibero-American Editors and Publishers. She is currently on research leave for the 2025–2026 academic term.