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Seminar on carnivalesque creativity, political mobilisation and collective artmaking
Happening On
18/05/2026
Please join us for a short seminar on carnivalesque creativity, political mobilisation and collective artmaking! With invited speaker Dr. Elena Merino Rivera (UNIR). Organised by the Memory, Commemoration and Uses of the Past research cluster of the Centre for Advanced Study in Languages and Cultures; Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies; the Department of Music and SENSA Lab UCC.
Monday 18 May 2026 from 10.00-11.30 am in North Tower Room 2.
The event will feature a talk by
Dr. Elena Merino Rivera (UNIR) and a roundtable. At 10am, Dr. Merino Rivera will deliver the following lecture (35 minutes):
Forms of musical theatre in southern Spain: the Cádiz Carnival factory. Prof. J. Griffith Rollefson will moderate the session.
This talk explores the Cádiz Carnival as a form of musical theatre, focusing on its distinctive genres, performative structures, and social function. It presents the Carnival as a liminal space where social norms are renegotiated, giving rise to layered forms of satire, collective expression, and cultural resistance.
Image credit: Elena Merino Rivera, Carnaval de Cádiz, 2018.
Los Prisioneros (“The Prisoners”), a
comparsa (or carnival group) with lyrics by Miguel Ángel García Argüez.
Elena Merino Rivera holds a PhD in Spanish Literature and is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR). She is a member of the Chair of Carnival Studies at the University of Cádiz. Her research interests include popular culture, contemporary cultural practices, and the relationship between media, memory, and reception. She has published on the Cádiz Carnival and is currently working on a book project examining its poetics and cultural significance.
Afterwards, three researchers working on carnivalesque creativity (
Dr. Chara Charalambous, Ioannis Kaprosioutis and Flavia Pontes Espindola) will join a roundtable (11-11.30am) and share thoughts on carnival as a platform for collective remembrance and collective creativity in multiple contexts.
All welcome!