About
Lourdes López-Ropero is a Professor in the English Department at the University of Alicante, where she teaches Contemporary and World literature in English. Her primary research focus is in the fields of Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies, and Transitional/Transformative Justice.
At the WPS, Lourdes has been doing research on the interface between women and transitional justice. This research is framed within the project RECONFEM, “Spaces of Reconciliation: Post-Conflict Interventions in Anglophone Women’s Writing (PID2022-138786NB-100, funded by MCIN / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033 / FEDER, UE), of which she is Principal Investigator. This project is based on the premise that, while attention has been drawn to the need to acknowledge the role of women as actors in peacebuilding and reconciliation processes (S/RES/1324), and to the alternative spaces of justice offered by the arts, research that addresses the link between women’s writing and conflict transformation remains to be done.
Lourdes’ research into postconflict women’s writing has a global approach, covering a geographically diverse range of sites including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia, and Bangladesh.
Selected Publications
Articles
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2026, forthcoming). “‘Reconciliation is not about being cosy’: Narratives of Unchilding in Two Soweto Children’s Books.” Complutense Journal of English Studies 34.
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2024). “Two London fires and a critique of grievability: Mournful protest, the Black elegy, and Jay Bernard’s Surge (2019).” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 60(3), 315–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2024.2344579
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2023). “A Curator in the House of Memory: Restoration, Implication and the Post-Conflict Novel in Aminatta Forna’s The Hired Man.” English Studies, 104(1), 134–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2022.2094576
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2020). “Remembering Jonestown through the camp and the postcolony: A multidirectional reading of Fred D’Aguiar’s Children of Paradise.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 56(3), 310–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2020.1720116
Books
- López-Ropero, Lourdes, ed. (2026, forthcoming). Postconflict Interventions in Women’s Writing: Crafting Reconciliatory Spaces. Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing.
- López-Ropero, Lourdes, Sokołowska-Paryż, Marzena, eds. (2025). Literary and Cultural Responses to Mnemonic Landscapes: Spaces in Transit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. ISBN 978-3-031-94177-1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-94178-8
Chapters
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2026, forthcoming). “Reconciliatory Spaces in Postconflict Women’s Writing: An Introduction.” In: López-Ropero (ed.) Postconflict Interventions in Women’s Writing: Crafting Reconciliatory Spaces. Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing.
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2026, forthcoming). “‘[I] placed the tip of my finger over her beating heart’: Unframing the Birangona in Tarfia Faizullah’s Testimonial Interview Poetry.” In: López-Ropero (ed.) Postconflict Interventions in Women’s Writing: Crafting Reconciliatory Spaces. Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing.
- López-Ropero, Lourdes. (2025). “Spaces in Transit: An Introduction.” In: López-Ropero, L., Sokołowska-Paryż, M. (eds) Literary and Cultural Responses to Mnemonic Landscapes: Spaces in Transit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-94178-8_1