Profile

Dr Deborah Madden is a literary scholar and cultural historian of modern Spain, specialising in Iberian feminisms, women’s writing and histories, collective memory, and the medical humanities. Central to her academic work are the intersections of sex, culture and political history, with a particular focus on women on the political left, female sexuality, sexual(ised) violence, and the politics of prostitution, pregnancy and abortion.

Recent and ongoing research projects include: sexual violence narratives and rape culture in Spain, which included a fellowship at the Complutense University of Madrid funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2020-2022); and collaboration on the transnational Heritages of Hunger project (Radboud University, Netherlands; 2020-2025), where her research interrogates the imbrication of gender, the politicisation of food, and discourses on hunger in (post-)Civil War and (post-)Francoist Spain.

Current research interests and works in progress centre on: hunger and the 'hunger years' in contemporary Spanish fiction; sexed manifestations of shame in (post-)Francoist Spain; and legal and feminist discourses on rape, from the Transition to the present day.