2014 Recipient

Patricia Garca is a Spanish-born academic who settled in Ireland a decade ago. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature by Dublin City University, where she now lectures in Spanish and Comparative Literature. She also collaborates in the area of literary translation with Trinity College Dublin and runs creative writing courses at the Instituto Cervantes Dublin, where she directs the literary magazine La letra en blanco.

She has been a guest lecturer in Lebanon and India, and is currently a member of the research group Research Group on the Fantastic (Universidad Autanoma de Barcelona) and editor of the academic journal Brumal: Research Journal on the Fantastic.

Her research interests in the area of Comparative Literature are concerned with the genre of the fantastic, in particular with the representation of impossible architectures in literature. Her most notable publications include a forthcoming book (Routledge, 2015) on the issue of spatial distortions in postmodern literature.

During her stay at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, she researched the presence of Paris in central writings of the fantastic, such as in short stories by Guy de Maupassant and Théophile Gautier. This research was concerned with the dialogue between urban space and artistic transgression and contributed to the continuing interdisciplinary debate on how human beings make sense of space.

In the words of the Rev. Liam Swords

'the aim is to establish a grant for a student of talent from the Irish Higher education sector to pursue his/her studies/research/training for an academic year in Paris and to immerse themselves in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. Candidates will be chosen from the widest possible groups, e.g., musicians, artists, sculptors, writers, scientists, engineers, scholars, craft-workers, theologians, architects, students of haute cuisine or haute couture, cinematographers etc.'