Blog del Instituto Cervantes de Londres

Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos, of Oxford University and the London School of Economics, has been awarded the  James Whiston Memorial Prize for the most outstanding academic article of 2021 by the Editors of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Her two-part study ‘Education, Intelligence and Cultural Diplomacy at the British Council in Madrid, 1940–1941’, focuses on the founding of the British Council’s first branch in Spain and only school to date with Irish Hispanist Walter Starkie at its head.  

Professor Isabel Torres, general editor of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies, said: ”Dr Pérez de Arcos’ meticulous archival research and engaging voice sheds light on an important period in history. It is a superbly researched and well-argued study that merits the highest praise”.

The James Whiston Memorial Prize of £1,000 is awarded each year to the author of an article on any subject within the field of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, which is judged by a panel of peer assessors to be the most original, accomplished and important study recently published (or accepted for publication) in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies or the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.

Dr Pérez de Arcos said: “I am delighted that my research has been recognised in this way by my peers. My main ambition is to share my knowledge with as wide an audience as possible­—winning this accolade will help draw attention to the remarkable events that took place in Spain in the early 1940s”.

Dr Pérez de Arcos is Research Associate at the Centre for International Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she teaches International Relations, and founding coordinator of Spanish Studies at Oxford until the end of this academic year. She is also guest Research Fellow at LSE, where she teaches International History. Her research covers Spain’s internationalisation in the 1970s and 1980s, Spain’s humanitarian policy during WWI, early Hispanism at Oxford, and she is co-founder of Global Thinkers of the International—a project aiming at revitalising silenced and underrepresented voices in international relations. She also has a keen interest in policy making and was a presidential advisor to Spain on G20 matters.

The annual prize of £1,000, donated from 2019 by Taylor & Francis Group, Publishers of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies and its sibling journal the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, has been established to honour the memory of James Whiston (1945–2017), Associate Professor, Fellow and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin and Member of the Royal Irish Academy. An internationally respected scholar of modern Spain, its history and culture, Professor Whiston was for many years (2002–2014) General Editor of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

The James Whiston Memorial Prize was awarded in 2019 to Dr Matthew Marr of The Pennsylvania State University, for his article  (Im)mobility at the Movies: el paro, Property and Prosthesis in Álex de la Iglesia’s La chispa de la vida (2011)* and in 2020 to  Dr David Rojinsky, University of Leeds for his study Reconciling Myth with Photographic Histories in Leandro Katz’s El día que me quieras.

The Bulletin of Spanish Studies was founded at the University of Liverpool in 1923 by the influential British Hispanist E. Allison Peers, and is a learned review dedicated to research into the languages, literatures, histories, cultures and civilizations of Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Also known as the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (1949–2001), the Bulletin of Spanish Studies soon established a worldwide reputation and is now recognised as one of the front-ranking journals in the field of Hispanic scholarship, publishing 10 issues per year. Its sibling journal the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies was established in 2017 and is published biannually.

Dr Marina Pérez del Arcos’ prize-winning article is available here:

Education, Intelligence and Cultural Diplomacy at the British Council in Madrid, 1940–1941

Part 1: Founding a School in Troubled Times       

Part 2: Shock Troops in the War of Ideas

This research was partly funded by a Santander Universities and British Spanish Society scholarship. Many of the archival materials used came from the National Archives and the Real Academia Española of which Walter Starkie was a corresponding Fellow.

Further information on the award can be found at https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/journal-prize-james-whiston-memorial-prize/