Blanca Deusdad - Members of the Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences

Blanca Deusdad Ayala

Visiting Scholar, IASS
Boston University

Ph.D. The Barcelona University (Catalonia, Spain)

Blanca Deusdad Ayala has been nominated for award Fulbright/Generalitat of Catalonia (2003), Visiting Scholar Program. She was a Ph.D. from the Department of Social Theory at The Barcelona University (2002) under the supervisor of Prof. Salvador Giner. She received her Degree in Geography and History at the same University in 1989 in the Department of Social Anthropology. In 1989 and 1990 she was a student in the Institute of Women's Studies (CIHD) at the same University and under the Direction of Prof. Mary Nash. She has also collaborated in a social study about the increasing of social volunteers in the City of Barcelona.

She has held summer courses at the University Complutense of Madrid (Escorial) about Present History The Socialist Period in Spain: 1982-1996 (1998) and different seminars in The International University Menéndez Pelayo (Santander, Spain): Spain and Europe the History of a Negotiation (1997) and the course From Sociology of Systems to Sociology of Actors (1998) given by Prof. Alain Touraine. Furthermore, She has been nominated for a fellowship at The International Seminar of European Ph. D. students, The History of European Elits, organized by ESTER (European Graduate School for Training in Economic and social historical Research) of The University of Nijmegen, Holland (1999) She has also held different courses in the Institute for the Political and Social Sciences at The University Autonomous of Barcelona such as Electoral Campaigns (1997) and Political Theory of Hannah Arendt (2001).

She has written different articles about popular culture and she received a fellowship of the City Council for writing a book with other authors About Traditions of Vilanova I la Geltrú (1989). She has an article about the "Speeches of Carnival" (2002) published in the proceedings of the Spanish Congress of Anthropology Culture and Politics (2002). Nevertheless, Blanca Deusdad Ayala recent research has been focused in the study of charisma and politics and the development of the concept of political charisma through the Social Theory. She presented a paper "The Case of Spanish President Felipe González Márquez (1982-1996)" and an article called " The Concept of Charismatic Leadership: Populism and Identity" Opcion , The University Central of Venezuela (in print). At the moment, she is writing a book about Charisma and her next project is to elaborate a political comparative study about western societies under the supervision of Prof. Liah Greenfeld (Boston University).