ICP welcomes Erika Fernández

Erika Fernández, PhD student in Humanities at the University of Alcalá (Spain), is on a three-month research visit at the Institute for Cultural Practices to collaborate with Dr Kostas Arvanitis, Senior Lecturer in Museology, and study messages from the spontaneous memorials that appeared after the Manchester Arena attack.

Erika also holds a Master in Documentation, Archives and Libraries from the University of Alcalá, and Professional Expert in Digital Humanities from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).

She is currently undertaking a PhD at the area of ​​Historiographic Sciences and Techniques of the University of Alcalá, which is part of the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Studies on Written Culture (SIECE) and the Research Group Reading Writing and Literacy (LEA).

Erika is also part of the project team "Words in time" for the classification, cataloguing and study of messages that people leave in Antonio Machado’s grave.

Her research interests are in the anthropology of writing, especially in spontaneous writings in public space, focusing on the uses and meanings of writing in specific cases such as spontaneous memorials, famous and anonymous people’s graves and digital mourning.