Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos

Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos

Guest Teacher and Visiting Research Fellow

Department of International History

Languages
English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Key Expertise
Modern European International Relations, WWI, Cold War, NATO, EU, Spain

About me

Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos FRHisSoc is a Research Fellow at the Department of International History, LSE. She serves as Head of History and Politics at Forward College – Europe, a new higher education institution partnered with the LSE, with campuses in Lisbon, Paris, and Berlin. She is also Forward’s Head of Institutional Relations. 

Marina has taught Inter-war History, Cold War History, European Integration, and Crisis and Decision-making to undergraduates and masters’ students at LSE for four years, winning the Department’s Best Class Teacher Award in 2018, and the Highly Commended Award in 2020 (as we all went into lockdown) ‘for dedicated commitment to class preparation, engagement with individual student needs and concerns, and enthusiastic teaching’. 

Marina’s research interest spans the late 19th and 20th centuries. Her research has been published in Spanish and English-language academic journals, including International History Review, Contemporary European History, Hispanic Research Journal, and the Bulletin of Spanish Studies. She won the James Whiston Memorial Prize (best article of the year published by the Bulletin of Spanish Studies) for her research on British cultural diplomacy in Spain during the Second World War. She has also won the Federal German Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation’s 2021 Research Award.  

Marina is embarking on a new research project on European humanitarianism during the First World War and has won a DeBakey Fellowship from the United States National Library of Medicine. She is working with Dr Dina Gusejnova (LSE) and Professor Arnd Baurkämpfer (FU Berlin) on a series of workshops and publications around the theme of internment during the Two World Wars.  

She is a Research Associate at the Centre for International Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she earned her MPhil and DPhil in International Relations. Her doctorate focused on Spain’s three key foreign policy issues after Francoism: rebalancing relations with the US, Spain’s 1986 NATO referendum, and negotiations to join the European Economic Community. Marina is currently completing her first monograph entitled González’s Global Spain: Accession, Remain and Rebalance (1982–1992).  

She is the founder of the Global Thinkers Project, which aims to revise silenced voices in the discipline of International Relations, that have been excluded from the canon due to biases of language, region, and gender. The project made it to the shortlist of three for the Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s 2021 Diversity Awards. 

She was the founding coordinator of the Spanish Studies at Oxford programme, housed at the European Studies Centre, a multidisciplinary programme bringing together all Spain-related research at the University of Oxford. She has convened several seminars and invited top speakers, including Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition Joaquín Almunia and President of Spanish National Heritage, Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán. In addition, Marina taught PPE finalists and lectured in International Relations at Oxford for eight years. 

Marina was among other awards, winner of the Vice-Chancellor’s Osma Studentship, the Santander Humanities Award, the Rothermere American Institute’s Politics Scholarship – she was the first Hispanic ever to win the scholarship, the Charterhouse Scholarship, the Cyril Foster Studentship, the Department of Politics and International Relations Studentship, as well as the St Cross College Award during the doctorate. She studied History (First) and Economics at the University of York, where she earned the highest marked undergraduate dissertation for her fieldwork in Medellín, Colombia. 

She has held Fellowships at the Rothermere American Institute, Humboldt University Berlin, the New University of Lisbon, and Sciences Po Paris. She is a polyglot and has policy experience at municipal, ministerial and presidential levels in France, Britain, and Spain. 

Marina is regularly asked to comment on European politics and foreign affairs related matters for English and Spanish-speaking media outlets, including the BBC, RTVE, El Clarín and La Nación (Argentina). 

Marina is a Trustee and Head of Scholarships of the British Spanish Society, an over-hundred-year-old charity that promotes educational and cultural links between Britain and Spain. She also serves as Secretary of the German History Society, is on the Board of The Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, the official peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies and sits on the Executive Committee of the Society of the History of War.  

 

 

Expertise Details

Modern European International Relations; First World War; Spain; NATO; US-Spain Relations; Cold War; EEC; EU

Publications