Emanuele Arioli - Principal Investigator
Emanuele Arioli is Senior Researcher (Investigador Distinguido) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Before joining the UAB, he was Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France since 2018. He holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from the Sorbonne and the Collège de France and an alumnus of the Écoles normales supérieures of Paris, Pisa, and the École nationale des chartes.
His research focuses on medieval literature and its filiations and revivals up to the twenty-first century. He has published seventeen books and has received several academic prizes. His doctoral dissertation (Sorbonne, 2017) was devoted to the discovery of an unknown Arthurian romance, Segurant, the Knight of the Dragon, which he reconstructed from fragments scattered across European manuscripts. This work inspired a 90-minute documentary, a graphic novel, a children’s book, and several exhibitions and international translations.
His habilitation à diriger des recherches, defended at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris in 2023, explored the Charlemagne epic traditions on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe (Africa). In parallel with the direction of the CAROLUS project, he is currently co-directing, with Thibaud Marchand, a 90-minute documentary produced by ARTE that follows the project’s development.
Raisa França Bastos - Postdoctoral Researcher
Raisa França Bastos is a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. A former student of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), she defended her PhD in 2022 in Comparative Literature and Romance Studies / Portuguese at the University of Paris Nanterre: “Mouvance de la matière carolingienne de l'Europe médiévale au Brésil contemporain” [Mouvance of the Carolingian Matiere from Medieval Europe to Contemporary Brazil : a Cultural Transfer Study] (Paris, coll. Mémoires du Moyen Âge, Honoré Champion, to be published in 2026). Her research focuses on the poetics of orality, cultural transfers, postcolonial literary approaches and traditions circulating between France and Brazil (especially inside the literatura de cordel and the cavalhadas). Raísa is also a french modern literature teacher (“agrégée”), a translator and an artist. Her translation work is rooted in both poetry and literary and theoretical prose: cordel, songs, articles, essays – including the fundamental feminist work Le rire de la Méduse written by Hélène Cixous in 1975 (O riso da Medusa, trans. by R. França Bastos and N. Guerellus, Rio de Janeiro, Bazar do Tempo, 2022). As an artist, she directs her own artistic company, Jabuticaba, in which she develops musical and theatrical projects.
Tiphanie Torres - Doctoral Researcher
Tiphanie Torres is a PhD researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Emanuele Arioli, examines the Charlemagne epic within the Opera dei pupi, the traditional Sicilian puppet theatre. She previously studied Art History at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, where she conducted research on the Renaissance painter Lavinia Fontana.
Alongside her academic background, she has worked in several museums — including the "Palais des Beaux-Arts" in Lille and the "Forum Antique de Bavay" — primarily as a museum guide. She is also an artist herself (painting, drawing, and theatre), and both her creative practice and her museum experience play a significant role in her research. They deepen her understanding of the material and performative dimensions of the puppet tradition, particularly in relation to the study, transmission, and safeguarding of traditional arts.
Miguel Ángel García Alfonso - Doctoral Researcher
Miguel Ángel García Alfonso is a historian and medievalist trained at the Universities of Murcia and Sevilla. He has worked as a professor of Geography and History at High School levels in the Region of Murcia. His most recent research focuses on queenship and on the figure of the Castilian queen consort María of Portugal (1313–1357). Throughout his academic career, he has worked in an archive and as a museum guide. He is currently a PhD researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Emanuele Arioli, analyzes the Romancero about Charlemagne in the Canary Islands, especially on La Gomera. It also offers a comparative study of other living theatrical and oral traditions involving Charlemagne in Spain, considering both medieval sources and contemporary manifestations.
Júlia Peris Barro - Doctoral Researcher
Júlia Peris Barro is a doctoral researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where she is part of the ERC-funded project CAROLUS. Under the supervision of Emanuele Arioli, her research investigates the global afterlives of the “Matter of Carolus Magnus,” focusing specifically on the living traditions of Central America. Her dissertation analyses the connections and transformations between the medieval epic and modern literary traditions, documenting contemporary cultural forms through intensive fieldwork and the study of oral and visual sources.
She holds a background in Archaeology and Heritage from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, where her research on contemporary heritage management and community archaeology of the Spanish Civil War resulted in her thesis, “Managing Memory in Place: Local actors and the contemporary archaeology of the Retirada in the Valley of Camprodon.”
Beyond her primary research, Júlia is deeply committed to queer archaeology and intersectionality theory. This has led to her participation in the UnamiradaLGTB+ project in Barcelona, where she helps create alternative, revised itineraries for cultural and scientific institutions. Her work consistently seeks to challenge normative narratives through decolonial, intersectional, and participative approaches, bridging the gap between historical research and contemporary living heritage.