Profile

Dr Deborah Madden (FHEA FRHistS) is a literary scholar and cultural historian of modern Spain, specialising in Iberian feminisms, women’s writing and histories, memory and gender politics, and health humanities. Central to her academic work are the intersections of sex, culture and political history, with a particular focus on gender and memory politics, ideologically-motivated resistance and oppression, sexual(ised) violence, and the politics of prostitution, pregnancy and abortion.

Deborah's current work centres on abortion in Hispanic popular culture, interrogating how popular culture informs, facilitates and responds to reproductive rights across Spain and Latin America. From 2026, this project will be supported by a British Academy and Leverhulme Trust grant.

Former 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); sexed manifestations of shame in (post-)Francoist Spain; and collaboration on the transnational Heritages of Hunger project (Radboud University, Netherlands; 2020-2025), focalising the imbrication of gender, the politicisation of food, and discourses on hunger in (post-)Civil War and (post-)Francoist Spain.

Deborah's work dialogues with the School of Global Affairs' research themes of Global Health & Disability, World Literatures & the Arts, Global Languages & Social Justice and Environmental & Social Change, and contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals by promoting (3) good health and wellbeing, (5) gender equality, (10) reduced inequalities and (16) peace, justice and strong institutions.