The Joan Coromines Visiting Chair of Catalan Studies was created in 2005 thanks to the support of the Institut Ramon Llull and is named in honor the eminent philologist and hispanomedievalist, Joan Coromines (1905-1997). Prof. Coromines taught at the University of Chicago from 1946 until his retirement in 1967, and was known for both his contributions to Romance philology, literary studies, and for his ardent defense of Catalan culture.
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Literary reviewer for the culture supplement Babelia of the newspaper El País. Co-director of the International Forum of Editors Edita Barcelona, organized by the Gremi d’Editors de Catalunya, the Master in Publishing of the UPF-BSM, the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España, the Ajuntament de Barcelona, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Ministerio de Cultura and the UNESCO. Former agent and literary advisor at Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells (1985-1999).
PhD in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona. University full professor of Spanish Literature and Compared Literature of the Humanities Department in the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. He is a funding member of the Humanities Faculty, of which he is vice-dean; member of the research commission of the Humanities Department, of which he has been secretary. He has been Culture Delegate and member of the Board of Direction of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He has been the founder of the contemporary arts space UPF Art Track.
He has been a literary critic of Quimera, El Periódico de Catalunya, ABC, Revista de Libros y Letras Libres. He has published in the most renowned international Hispanism journals (Ínsula, Revista de Occidente, Journal of Hispanic Philology, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, La Torre, etc.), and many books, including a critical edition of Vladimir Nabokov, ¡Mira los arlequines!, Cátedra, Madrid, 2001. (3ª edición, 2018); a critical edition of Patrick Modiano, La hierba de las noches, Cátedra, Madrid, 2015; a critical edition of Italo Calvino, Palomar, Cátedra, Madrid, 2017; a critical edition of Eduardo Mendoza, Una comedia ligera, Cátedra, Madrid, 2019; Calderón y la máquina barroca, Rodopi, Amsterdam-Nueva York, 1999; Estudios sobre Calderón, Istmo, Madrid, 2000; Lecturas de ficción contemporánea. De Kafka a Ishiguro, Cátedra, Madrid, 2008 (4ª edición, 2020); El desguace de la tradición. En el taller de la narrativa del siglo XX, Cátedra, Madrid, 2011 (3ª edición, 2018); Continuidad y ruptura. Una gramática de la tradición en la cultura contemporánea, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2013 and La imaginación en la jaula. Razones y estrategias de la creación coartada, Cátedra, Madrid, 2015. The previous four books compose El artista en sus laberintos: una tetralogía de la creación contemporánea.
He has been a visiting professor at Duke University and University of Chicago (USA), Université de Montréal (Canada), Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy) and Tübingen Universität (Germany), and a resident researcher at the Real Academia de España en Roma.
