Kirsty Hooper

Kirsty Hooper serves as Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick's School of Modern Languages and Cultures, having joined in 2012 after eight years at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on Spanish, Anglo-Spanish and Galician cultural history since 1800, with particular expertise in Hispanic communities in the United Kingdom and global nineteenth-century networks.

• PGCert in Genealogy, Palaeography, and Heraldry, Strathclyde University (2023)
• PGCert in Digital Humanities, University College London (2015)
• PGCert in Higher Education, University of Liverpool (2009)
• DPhil in Modern Languages, University of Oxford (2003)
• MSt in Slavonic Studies (Polish), University of Oxford (1998)
• BA (Hons) in Modern Languages (Spanish), University of Oxford (1997)

Her scholarship centers on transnational cultural exchanges between Britain and Spain, examining mobilities, genealogies, and microhistories through projects like Hispanic London: Culture, Commerce and Community in the Nineteenth-Century City. She actively explores how Hispanic communities navigated imperial decline while shaping London's cultural and commercial landscape, combining archival research with innovative digital humanities approaches. Her work frequently addresses questions of national identity, colonial legacies, and regional cultural production.

Recent publications demonstrate consistent thematic focus on Anglo-Spanish connections, Galician regional identity, and imperial networks across multiple disciplines. She examines travel literature's role in shaping perceptions of Spain, analyzes tourism's impact on regional economies, and investigates cultural production within diasporic communities. Her methodological approach blends microhistorical techniques with transnational frameworks, revealing how individual experiences intersect with broader imperial narratives.

• Philip Leverhulme Prize (2012-2015)
• Membro Correspondente, Real Academia Galega (2017)
• Fellow, Royal Historical Society (2022)
• Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for Hispanic London project (2020-2023)

Professor Hooper has secured substantial research funding including the Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship supporting her current project reconstructing nineteenth-century Spanish communities in London. She actively engages in public scholarship through her Encountering Spain lecture series for Instituto Cervantes Manchester-Leeds, examining British perceptions of Spanish regions. Her teaching includes courses on Hispanic world identities, Galician cultural connections, and Spain-Philippines relations at empire's end.

Her Hispanic London project constitutes her primary research infrastructure, involving extensive archival work across British and Spanish collections to reconstruct individual biographies, commercial networks, and neighborhood dynamics. This initiative positions London as a crucial hub in Hispanic imperial networks, examining how Spanish residents maintained transoceanic connections while adapting to British society during periods of imperial transition.