Faculty Profiles

faculty photo imageMónica López Lerma

Associate Professor of Spanish and Humanities
Spanish Department
Division of Literature and Languages

Mónica joined Reed in 2015. She received a PhD in Comparative Literature and a Graduate Certificate in Film Studies from the University of Michigan. She also holds a Law degree from the University of Valencia (Spain) and a LL.M. in Jurisprudence from the European Academy of Legal Theory (Belgium). At Reed she teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses in film theory, political documentaries, law and violence, justice and the senses, and cinema and human rights. She has also taught both graduate seminars and undergraduate courses at the Faculty of Law of the University of Helsinki, the Peter A. Allard School of Law of the University of British Columbia, and the School of International Relations of the Kyrgyz State National University. Mónica’s research interests include contemporary Spanish film and literature, with particular emphasis on film theory, gender, aesthetics, politics, memory, and cultural and theoretical aspects of law. She is the author of Sensing Justice through Contemporary Spanish Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics, Law (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and the co-editor of Rancière and Law (Routledge, 2018). She has also co-edited two special issues of No-Foundations. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice: “Judging Democracy, Democratic Judgment” (2012) and “Law’s Justice. A Law and Humanities Perspective” (2013). She is currently working on a new book project tentatively titled Documentaries Against the Law: Evidence, Affect, and Reflexivity and editing a book entitled Espacios y límites de la (in)justicia en la España contemporánea. From 2012 to 2017, Mónica was editor-in-chief of No-Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and currently is a member of its editorial board. She also serves on the Executive Committee on 20th and 21st Century Spanish and Iberian Languages, Literatures and Cultures (2019-2024). Mónica has been a recipient of numerous fellowships, such as the Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant, the Jean Monnet Graduate Fellowship, and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Research Fellowship.


More faculty profiles