Expert in Cultural Keys of Iran. Teaching staff

JUAN ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ-PEDROSA NÚÑEZ (Course Director)
Professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he has worked since 1991. He has a PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Oviedo. He has researched various topics related to the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages and the religion of the ancient peoples of that language family. For years he has opened a new line of research on ancient Iranian religion, especially in contact with the Classical World and the influence that can be detected in the Greeks and Romans and its special importance in the generation of new salvation religions; he also works on the cultural and linguistic relationship between Iran and the Classical World during the Achaemenid and Parthian periods. This line of work has given rise to various books and articles in scientific journals. In relation to this, the Degree in Sciences of Religions of the UCM teaches the subject of Zoroastrianism. He is the Director of the title of Expert in Cultural Keys of Iran.

ALFRED GUTIÉRREZ KAVANAGH (Co-director)

European Doctor from the Complutense University and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. Lawyer. MBA. Professor of Specialized Legal Translation and International Relations (Middle East) at the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas (UPC). A specialist in comparative law and private international law, he has dedicated a large part of his professional career to the analysis of Islamic legal and political systems, focusing on the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has been president of the Spanish Society of Iranian Stuies (SEI) [2013-2019].

He is the author of numerous publications relating to cultural and diplomatic studies relating to the Middle East. Among the most recent, Iran por Dentro. La otra Historia, published by José J. de Olañeta in 2010 and El Viaje a Persia (2012), a work that analyzes the relations between Europe and Iran throughout history.

TEA VARDOSANIDZE
Postgraduate Diploma in Persian Language and Literature from the Ivane Javakhishvili University of Tbilisi. Postgraduate course in Persian Language and Literature from the ‘Alame Tabataba’i University and Az-Zahra Institute of Tehran. She has completed doctoral studies at the Tbilisi National Center for Manuscripts. She has a PhD from the Autonomous University of Madrid in Artistic, Literary and Cultural Studies with a thesis on Persian-Iranian contemporary literature. She has several publications on women writers and modernity in Iran. She is a professor of Persian at Casa Asia and President of the Spanish Society of Iranian Studies – SEI.

MARCOS UYÁ ESTEBAN
He has a degree in History and in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Granada. He graduated in Advanced Studies in the Doctorate Program “Cities and Cultures in the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean” and Master’s Degree in History: “From Europe to America. Societies, Powers, Cultures” by the same university. He is a member of the Spanish Society of Iranian Studies. High School Teacher of Geography and History. Author of numerous publications and podcasts on Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages and Persia.

JUAN EUGENIO BRICEÑO VILLALOBOS
Graduated in Classical Philology at the University of Murcia and followed an Interuniversity Master’s Degree in Classical Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). At this same university he carried out his doctoral studies on Indo-European comparative linguistics. He received his doctorate in 2019 with a doctoral thesis on the morphology of indefinite pronouns and their polarity in ancient Greek and Indo-Iranian. Until August 2022, he was the principal investigator of the project ‘Conditional markers and free-choice indefinite relatives in early Indo-European languages: their morphological connection’ developed at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Currently, he works as a PhD assistant professor in the Department of Classical Philology within the area of knowledge of Indo-European Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology at the UCM.

JOAQUÍN RODRÍGUEZ VARGAS
He has a PhD in Arabic Philology from the Complutense University and is a sworn interpreter of the Persian language from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thanks to his long career in Persian Studies, he has achieved 6 decorations / recognitions from different state bodies in Iran. He has more than fifteen publications related to Iranology, he has been a professor of Persian at the University of Seville and at the School of Modern Languages of the University of Barcelona, and he currently teaches this language at the Iranian Cultural Department since 2010. where he has come to teach level B3-3. He has also been a tutor for internship students at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Complutense University, has given numerous lectures on Persian Studies both in academic forums in Spain and Iran, has been a member of scientific, editorial and review commissions for peers, and director and founder of the highly popular magazine Mundo Iranio.

BERTA GONZÁLEZ SAAVEDRA
She graduated in Classical Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid and in Italian Philology from the University of Valencia. She is a doctor in Ancient World Studies with a thesis supervised by professors Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa and Eugenio Luján in which she makes a comparative study between three ancient Indo-European languages: Greek, Latin and Hittite. Since 2020 she has been a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, after being a professor and having a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship at the Autonomous University of Madrid and after having obtained a research contract at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan (Italy), where she worked on the semantic annotation of Latin texts.

FARSHAD ZAHEDI

He is a doctor in Film History from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He is a titular professor at the Communication Department of  Carlos III University of Madrid. He has given numerous conferences and has written numerous articles on Iranian cinema. Among his latest publications, the following stand out: Iran-India, cinematographic relations: a historical review of filmfarsi, Miguel Hernandéz Communication Journal 13 (2): 451-470 (2022); The image of Tehran in Iranian cinema released in Spain, in An old friendship: four hundred years of historical and cultural relations between Iran and the Hispanic world (Sílex, 2020), and The tragic hero of Iranian revolutionary cinema in Magazine of the West, no. 454 (2019). In addition, he is the author of the book 40 years of Iranian cinema. The case of Dariush Mehrjui (Forge, 2010).

JUAN CARLOS PASTOR GÓMEZ

Graduated in International Relations from the Complutense University of Madrid. He is a doctoral candidate in International Relations and assistant professor in the Department of International Relations and Global History. He is specialized in the geostrategic and security analysis of the Middle East, specifically the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as in Russian foreign policy in Central Asia during his stay at the Russian University of Friendship between Peoples-Patrice Lumumba in Moscow, where he studied the Master in International Security and Cooperation. He has also completed the Master in International Politics: Sectoral and Area Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is the author of numerous publications, including the book Iran’s Foreign Policy: Power and Security in the Middle East. Iran’s Foreign Policy: Power and Security in the Middle East.