9th International Conference on the Links between Spain and North America

Ramona Hernández - City College of New York

Dr. Ramona Hernández is Professor of Sociology at the City College of New York, City University of New York (CUNY) and Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI). Dr. Hernández is also affiliated with the Doctoral faculties of the Department of Sociology and the Master of International Studies, both at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Dr. Hernández's research areas include the mobility of Latin American and Caribbean workers, the socioeconomic conditions of Dominicans in the United States, and the restructuring of the global economy and its effects on the working class. A renowned public speaker, Dr. Hernández has lectured at numerous universities and community venues in the US, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.

She is the author, co-author, and co-editor of numerous books, book chapters, and academic journal articles. Among his published books is The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States (Columbia University Press), an innovative book on the socioeconomic conditions of Dominicans in the US, and awarded by the prestigious North American academic journal Choice, with the award “Outstanding Academic Title.” She is also editor of Classic Knowledge in Dominican Studies (Routledge), the first series of classic books on Dominican studies in the U.S. The Dominican Republic and the Foreign Press: May 1961-September 1963 (From the Disappearance of Trujillo to Juan Bosch) (Pedro Henríquez Ureña National Library; with Sully Saneaux); From the Shore: Towards a Nationality Without Evictions (La Trinitaria; with Silvio Torres Saillant); and The American Dominicans (Greenwood Press; with Silvio Torres Saillant). Currently, Dr. Hernández is working on two books, one about Dominican immigrants who came to the US through the famous port of Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924, under contract with Columbia University Press, and another about the emergence of the Dominican community in the US co-authored with Gregory Morton, under contract with Lived Places Publishing.

Under the leadership of Dr. Hernández, CUNY DSI has become a research institute that enjoys undisputed leadership in the academic field, both nationally and internationally. Her reputation has been fostered in the production of pioneering academic studies in the areas of Dominican and Latin Studies. Under his charge, the Institute's library was established in a modern facility, and has the only library staff specialized in Dominican Studies in the entire US. Also, the first Dominican Archive outside the Dominican Republic was inaugurated, which contains the largest collection of Dominican colonial documents in the US with approximately 110,000 pages of manuscripts on 16th century Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Republic of Haiti). The Dominican Archive is also the only repository dedicated exclusively to preserving the papers that document the experience and actions of the Dominican people in the United States.

The Institute has received numerous prestigious grants in the U.S., including the Aaron David, Andrew W. Mellon, Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Endowment, as well as the various spheres CUNY DSI is recognized for its innovative projects including several online platforms, such as The Spanish Paleography Digital Teaching and Learning Tool; A history of Dominican music in the United States; The First Blacks in the Americas; and Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans of World War II.

Dr. Hernández is a member of the board of advisors of several publishing projects and organizations, among which are: Editorial Board of the book series Latinos/as in the Americas; Latino/a Sociology; Latinos: Exploring Diversity and Change; the academic journals Latino Studies and Camino Real: studies of North American Hispanicities; the Sociological Initiative Foundation and the Global Institute of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Hernández has received numerous awards for her work, including a United States Congressional Medal. Her work is also celebrated in the Dominican Republic, where she received the highest distinction granted by the Government of that country, The Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez y Mella.

Francisco Moreno Fernández -  University of Heidelberg and Universidad de Alcalá

Francisco Moreno Fernández is Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Heidelberg and Honorary Research Professor at Universidad de Alcalá. He has been Academic Director of the Instituto Cervantes , where he has also directed the centers in São Paulo, Chicago, and Harvard, the latter as Executive Director of the Observatory of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures in the United States. He is currently Director of the Global Spanish Observatory. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the universities of London, New York, Quebec, and Tokyo, and a visiting professor at universities in Europe, Latin America and the United States. He is a full academic of the Academia Europaea and the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE) and corresponding member of the RAE, and the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican academies of the Language. His publications include: Social history of the languages ​​of Spain (2005), Principles of Sociolinguistics and Sociology of Language (2008), The Spanish language in its geography (2016), The wonderful history of Spanish (2015), Atlas of the language Spanish in the world (with J. Otero Roth, 2016) and Tras Babel (2018). In 2003 he received the award for the best series of articles in large-circulation newspapers from the National Association of Hispanic Publications of the United States, and in 2019 the XV Don Quijote Prize for Journalism.

Carlos Canales - Lawyer, writer, and expert in Modern History and Spanish Folklore

Carlos Canales Torres (Madrid, 1963) is a lawyer and writer. A researcher of folklore and traditions, he is the author, together with Jesús Callejo, of Duendes (1994), the first work in the trilogy about the "magical beings of Spain" and Seres y Lugares en los que usted no cree (1995). As a researcher of the history of Spain, he has been director of the history magazines Ristre and Ristre Napoleónico and is the author of dozens of historical articles and essays. In 2011 he was awarded the IX Algaba Prize for Biography, Memories and Historical Research—on a shared basis—and between 2012 and 2106 he was in charge of the collection Trazos de la historia. He has been a member of the program La Rosa de los Vientos, on Onda Cero, co-author of the book Enigma: de las pirámides de Egipto al asesinato de Kennedy and is part of the team of the program La escóbula de la brújula, on the SER chain. Canales and Del Rey participate in the North American history project Edge & Cleaver and together they have published fifty titles referring to the history of Spain.