Dr Gorka Mercero Altzugarai

Personal Statement

I was appointed Lecturer in Basque Studies at the University of Liverpool in 2014. Prior to this, I completed a BA in Basque Philology (2000), an MA in Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University (2004), and a PhD at the University of the Basque Country (2012) on the confluence of memory issues and postmodernist worldviews in the work of contemporary novel writers in Basque.

I have published journal articles, book chapters and a monograph on the various ways to understand national and individual identities between the two poles of modern essentialism and postmodernist anti-essentialism as can be perceived in the work of a range of contemporary writers in Basque language: Bernardo Atxaga, Ramon Saizarbitoria, Anjel Lertxundi, etc.

I would be happy to supervise MRes and PhD projects related to the representation of national identities in contemporary culture and the tension between nationalism and universalism in which they are inevitably immersed. That includes, among others, research on conflict, nationalism/postnationalism, cosmopolitanism, world literature and planetarity.

Currently supervised PhD students:
Thomas Olver: 'Moving Past Patria: Locating Memory in Contemporary Basque Fiction'.