Speaker: Dr. Pedro Nilsson-Fernàndez (University College Cork) 

Abstract:

The crime fiction genre in the Catalan-speaking context has experienced unprecedented growth over the last two decades, emerging as one of the most dynamic areas of contemporary Catalan literature. This talk will analyse the evolution of Catalan crime fiction from a digital geocritical perspective, focusing on the decentralisation of narrative spaces over a 70-year period (1953–2023). While Barcelona has traditionally been at the epicentre of Catalan noir, reflecting its prominence as a cultural and urban hub, the genre’s increasing diversification has seen significant spatial shifts toward peripheral and rural locations as the site of the narrative. The study I will present in this talk aims to map and quantify this transformation by combining quantitative and qualitative methods, including text mining, geoparsing, and visualisation via Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Using distant reading techniques and close textual analysis, we analyze a corpus of 92 crime fiction works to trace the chronology and extent of these geographical shifts, interrogating both urban centrality and rural peripherality in Catalan noir.

Short bio:

Pedro Nilsson-Fernàndez is a lecturer in Digital Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland, where he has also held posts in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. His research looks at literary spaces in the context of Iberian minoritised languages and cultures, particularly through the use of computer-assisted text analysis techniques and GIS visualisations. He is also interested in multilingual approaches to the field of Digital Humanities, sustainability and the maker community.

He is co-convenor of the GeoHumanities CIG within the Alliance of Digital Humanities Associations(ADHO), president of the Associació d’Humanitats Digitals Catalanes (AHDCat) and co-convenor of the Multilingual Digital Humanities CIG within the UK and Ireland Digital Humanities Association.