José
Díaz-Cuesta Galián

Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the Department of Modern Languages of the University of La Rioja. He has been working at this institution since 1995. He started with a scholarship of the programme designed to train university lecturers. He has also lectured at the University of Leeds and the University of Zaragoza. His main research interest is the analysis of the representation of masculinities in film texts. His PhD, presented in 2010, places this issue in the monster movies directed by Steven Spielberg. He has also researched on films by other directors like Ken Loach, Francis Ford Coppola, Bill Anderson, Roger Donaldson, John Michael McDonagh, John Carney, Stephen Frears or Ciarán O’Connor. He is a member of the research project Fortalece 2021/04 “Creative writing in the university classroom and in transversal sectors of Riojan society". Presently, he is Chief Digital Transformation Officer and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). He has been responsible of Audiovisuals and Language Laboratories at the Faculty of Letters and Education (2005-2018). He got his BA in English Studies at the University Oviedo, having spent the fifth and last year at the University of Leeds. He holds an MA in Film Studies from the University of Valladolid and is a European Doctor from the University of La Rioja. He is a member of the research group ‘Representations of identities in filmic and literary texts in English’ (GRID) and of the Centre for Irish Studies BANNA/BOND. He has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Oxford, London, Toronto, Leeds, Münster and Dundee, and at the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. He is founding member of the Cinematic and Audiovisual Society of the University of La Rioja, and member of the Board of the Cultural Association Trama y Fondo (tramayfondo.com). He has edited seven books. The latest one, co-edited with Anthony Palmiscno, is entitled Kindred Spirits: Representations of Alcohol in Literature and Film (Peter Lang, 2022). He has been the editor of the Journal of English Studies (publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes) and one volume of the Revista de Comunicación de la SEECI. He has published over seventy articles and book chapters, and has been peer reviewer of several academic journals. He has co-organised various scientific conferences. In 2020 he was the Head organiser of the 11th International Conference on Textual Analysis ‘Gods of Wine’, which was held online owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Teaching Innovation Award of the Board of Trustees of the University of La Rioja for having developed a short film in English with his students. From that point forward he has attempted to produce a short film every year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG1iBCU-EbA&list=PLuGkcr3r2R_Y9ZOvfoKw6_02CEtE_d27B). He has been a member of several teaching innovation projects and led three of them. He is more and more seriously pondering the possibility of making an amateur feature film.