RESEARCH GROUP
Through its history, HISTEX complies with gender parity policies, maintains a proportion between senior and junior researchers, and presents an extraordinary multidisciplinary confluence of interests. At the present, along with philosophers and historians, HISTEX includes historians of art, curators, visual artists, documentary producers, and medical practitioners. Since the composition of HISTEX is one of our strengths, it might be worth giving here a short description of its members.
Our RESEARCH GROUP is formed by the following scholars:
PAUL MICHAEL JOHNSON
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, DePauw University, (Greencastle, Indiana), where he specializes in the literature and culture of the Golden Age. In 2014 he earned a PhD in Spanish Philology from the University of California at Irvine, with an emphasis in Critical Theory. Previously, he was a Fulbright Scholar in the National Library of Spain and in the National Historical Archive in Madrid.
TOMAS MACSOTAY
Research Lecturer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He is an art and cultural historian specialized in the history of European sculpture in the eighteenth century. His books include The Profession of Sculpture in the Paris Académie (Oxford University, 2014), the edited collections The Hurt(ful) Body. Performing and Beholding Pain, 1600-1800 (Manchester University Press, 2017), Rome, Travel and the Sculpture Capital (Routledge, 2016), among others.
ALBERTO FRAGIO
Full-time tenured professor in the Humanities Department of the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico City, Cuajimalpa Unit. He received a PhD in Philosophy (2007) from the Autonomous University of Madrid, and in Cultural Sciences (2011) from the Scuola Internazionale di Alti Studi di Modena (Italy). He has been a researcher at the Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung der Universität zu Lübeck (Germany).
JOSEFA ROS VELASCO
Josefa Ros Velasco is a postdoctoral researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid, where she is the PI of the project “Pre-bored. Well-being and prevention of boredom in Spanish nursing homes”, financed by the European program H2020 under a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions contract. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at Harvard University for Distinguished Junior Scholars program. She is a specialist in Boredom Studies from a multidisciplinary perspective, and also the founder and president of the International Society of Boredom Studies. She is the author of the book The disease of boredom (Alianza, 2022), and editor of books such as Suicide in modern literature (Springer, 2021), among others.
VICENTE PALOP
Family doctor. Assistant director of the Department of Health of the hospital La Ribera (Alzira, Valencia). Over the years, Palop has been in charge of the Unit for the Treatment of Fibromyalgia patients at the aforementioned hospital. He was the source of inspiration for our HISTEX-produced Documentary "Consulta 32". Though his publications refer almost exclusively to the medical profession, he is still working with us in different projects related to the effects of placebo in chronic pain sufferers.
PATRICIA ROTH
Family Doctor. Roth combines her work with her research in the field of narrative medicine and chronic pain. She teaches health care in professional training and has been involved in HISTEX activities related to the experience of Fibromyalgia patients for the last ten years.
BLANCA FOLCH
Family and Community Medicine Doctor, currently working in Primary Care at the Alberic health centre (Valencia). Her professional career has been mainly focused on clinical care and community care in patients with chronic pain due to fibromyalgia syndrome and chronic fatigue and in the field of mental health and health management
PAMELA LOERA
Graduate (2009), master (2014) and doctor (2019) in History from the Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México. Her lines of research are the history of modesty, the history of paedophilia, the history of medicine and the historiography of the 19th century. From 2015, she works as a professor in the Department of History of the Universidad Iberoamericana. She is posdoctoral fellow at Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas of Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN (Mexico City).
LORENA SANTOS DE TORREGROZA
PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds a master’s degree in Political Theory and Democratic Culture (2022) from the same University. Her Master's Thesis (2022) was entitled What is rape? The role of theories, spaces and sexuality in the understanding of rape. She is a Political Scientist (2016) graduate with honors from Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá, Colombia) and co-author of the book Politics of Emotions (2022). Her main research interests include rape theory, philosophy of the body, and ethics of sexuality.
FABIO SCALESE
PhD candidate at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (director: Diego Garrocho Salcedo). He was Predoctoral FPI (2018-2022) by the MINECO project "History and philosophy of experience. Objective and subjective elements of wellbeing in history, culture and clinical practice" (PI: Javier Moscoso) at the CCHS-CSIC.
MARGARITA SÁNCHEZ-MÁRMOL
PhD student in Philosophy and Language Sciences (UAM). Researcher in the European project
"Failure" by MIAS and UAM. Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Theory of Culture (UCM) and Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (UCM). Her areas of research focus on the study of the artistic historical avant-garde through a reading influenced by the German
idealism of Hegel and the postmodern philosophy of Nietzsche. Her publications include: The
Surprised Eye. A study of the work of René Magritte (Brújula, 2021), Contemporary subjectivity
(Página 12, 2021), After the representation (Entrelazos, 2018).
RUTH SOMALO
Spanish visual artist, curator, researcher and educator based in New York.
Her feature and short films have been shown in theaters, festivals and museums internationally. Her latest work is concerned with taboos around the female body and its illnesses, patriarchal structures & narrative medicine, human remains, tears, ritual healing, experiences of loss and the legacies of the Witch Hunts.
She currently works as Senior Programmer at DOC NYC Film Festival, DocumentaMadrid and The Architecture and Design Film Festival. Some of her independently curated programs include "The affection for small things” (Cineteca de Madrid), "Filming One’s own Ghosts”, “Holy Fluids and Absent Wounds” (Union Docs) and “Broken Senses” (Anthology Film Archives). Ruth also works as a mentor, seminar Instructor and as advisor of non fiction projects. She is a PhD. candidate at Autonomous University of Madrid, and she is finishing her dissertation “MENDING OBJECTS: Mourning, reparation and the self in contemporary non fiction”.
MERCEDES LÓPEZ MATEO
PhD student in Philosophy at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Universities (2024-2028). She graduated in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Alliance 4-Universities (UPF, UAM, UC3M). She has a Master's degree in Philosophical Criticism and Argumentation (UAM) and also a Master's in Classical Studies (UCM, UAM, UAH). Her lines of research focus on the concept of rootedness in Simone Weil, as well as her reception of the classics, and the ancient political philosophy linked to the history of emotions.