Rate My Professor Rosi Song

Professor Rosi Song is Professor of Hispanic Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, at Durham University. She earned her Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University in 2000, with a dissertation on history, politics, and fiction in Spain from 1962 to 1982. She also holds an A.M. in Spanish and Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996 and a B.A. in the same fields from the same university in 1993, graduating with Highest Distinction in Spanish. Prior to her appointment at Durham in 2020, Song was Professor of Spanish at Bryn Mawr College from 2007 to 2019, Associate Professor from 2002 to 2007, Assistant Professor from 2000 to 2002, and Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College from 1997 to 1999.

Song's research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish culture and literature, including memory construction, political transition, detective fiction, la Movida, and food culture in Hispanic contexts, particularly Catalan gastronomy and identity. She serves as Principal Investigator for the RELISH project, which received a €3.8 million Horizon Europe grant in 2024 to develop digital tools for preserving European culinary heritage through innovation, sustainability, and public engagement. Her key publications include the co-authored book A Taste of Barcelona: The History of Catalan Cooking and Eating (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, with Anna Riera); Lost in Transition: Constructing Memory in Contemporary Spain (Liverpool University Press, 2016); editor (with William J. Nichols) of Towards a Cultural Archive of la Movida: Back to the Future (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013); co-editor (with Eloy E. Merino) of Traces of Contamination: Unearthing the Francoist Legacy in Contemporary Spanish Discourse (Bucknell University Press, 2005); and articles such as 'Catalanidad in the Kitchen: Tourism, Gastronomy and Identity in Modern and Contemporary Barcelona' (Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2020, with Leigh Mercer) and contributions to Gastronomica (2025). Song has received awards including the Penn Humanities Forum Mellon Regional Fellowship (2006-2007), multiple Bryn Mawr Faculty Research Funds, and a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and United States Universities (2003). She is a member of the Gastronomica Editorial Collective and Durham's Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and engages in public lectures and international collaborations on cultural heritage.