The City Council of Cerdanyola del Vallès and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona announced yesterday the winners of the 2024 literary awards. Carla Clúa Alcón (Reus) with the work Pausa, sucre, Sevilla, presented under the pseudonym “América”, is the winner of the XV short story prize for young people “Caterina Albert”, endowed with 500 euros. Josep Antoni Aguilar Àvila (València), with the work Ballar amb els espectres, presented under the pseudonym “Sparverius”; and Josep Domènech Ponsatí (Sant Feliu de Guíxols), with the work Eixint de fer, presented under the pseudonym “Armand Polito”, are the ex-aequo winners of the XXIX poetry prize “Miquel Martí i Pol”, endowed with 1,000 euros. Miquel Ribas Figueras (Cabrils) with the work Ilha do Farol, presented under the pseudonym “Nuno Bolotas”, was the winner of the XXX novel prize “Valldaura-Memorial Pere Calders”, endowed with 3,000 euros. In this edition, a total of 192 works have opted for the prizes, of which 25 have participated in the short story, 85 in the poetry and 82 in the novel prize. These figures are the highest since 2002, when the organizers decided to merge their respective contests and start their call for entries jointly. The winning works will be published by the UAB Publications Service and will be presented in November in Cerdanyola del Vallès.

During the ceremony, Carmen Alcolea, member of the jury of the Short Narrative Prize, was in charge of reading the minutes of the meeting of the jury of this same award, where she said that the winning story Pausa, sucre, Sevilla stands out for its “careful style, evocative lexicon, own idiolect and interior monologue”.

For his part, Joan Carles Marset, director of the Publications Service of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and secretary of the jury of the Poetry Prize, explained that this is the first time that a prize has been awarded ex-aequo to two participants. The editor argued that the jury unanimously agreed on the high quality of both works. Specifically, on Ballar amb els espectres, the jury highlights the narrative dimension that gives the poems, with a very intelligent use of different mythological legacies. Likewise, with respect to Eixint de fer, the jury highlighted aspects such as its lexical richness and use of stylistic resources, or its sharp, intellectual and sensual sense of humor.

Finally, Marset read the deliberation of the Novel Prize, where the jury has defended that Ilha do Farol is worthy of the prize for being well written, having a rich language, a prolix style and using the pretext of the apocalypse or the end of the world with a contained and quite original approach. Likewise, the members of the jury agreed that the work shows a taste for narrative, branching out into collateral stories, and that it also makes a notable use of humor or sarcasm, which serves to include elements of social criticism.

The awards ceremony was also attended by representatives of the two institutions organizing the awards, including Javier Lafuente Sancho, Rector of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Rosa María Sebastián, Vice Rector of Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship at the UAB; Margarita Freixas y Alás, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UAB; Carlos Cordón, Mayor of the City Council of Cerdanyola del Vallès; and David González Chanca, Councilor of Culture, Communication and EMD of Bellaterra of the City Council of Cerdanyola del Vallès.

The actor Carles Cruces presented the event, which was enlivened by the performances of the UAB Chamber Choir and the poetic recital Marçal sentida, by Sofia Oliva (alumni and predoctoral student of the UAB) and Laia Solé (student of the UB), who paid tribute to the work of Àngel Guimerà and Maria-Mercè Marçal, respectively. In addition, the awards ceremony was broadcast live on the YouTube channel of the UAB, where the video of the event will also be published soon.

Víctor López-Simó and Digna Couso, lecturers in Science Didactics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), have just published the book, Didàctica de la física per a l’educació secundària obligatòria, as part of the "Materials" collection of the University's Publications Service.

It is often thought that physics is not of direct use in everyday life, is difficult and is neither interesting nor accessible to a large part of the pupils in the 12 to 16 year-old educational stage. Some of the main questions that many teachers, education and science popularisation professionals ask themselves are, for example: what are the key ideas in physics that students need to learn during their compulsory secondary education; why is it important to learn these ideas; what makes it so difficult for students to construct them in a meaningful way; or what strategies and teaching resources can help in this task.

Didáctica de la física para la educación secundaria obligatoria is a manual that aims to guide the teaching and learning processes of this discipline, emphasising the understanding of concepts, leaving aside the memorisation of equations and procedures, and starting from the students' previous knowledge. The authors of the book focus on everyday phenomena and dialogue, and apply them to each of the four main branches of classical physics: mechanics, electromagnetism, electromagnetism, physics and physics of the universe. In this volume, López-Simó and Couso share their visions, resources and experiences, acquired throughout their professional careers.

Víctor López-Simó holds a degree in Physics (2009) and a PhD in Science Education (2014). He has worked as a physics and chemistry teacher at ESO and Bachillerato, and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Didactics of Mathematics and Experimental Sciences at the UAB, where he teaches Science Didactics to trainee teachers in primary and secondary education. Her research has focused on the conceptual understanding of physics and chemistry, as well as on the use of digital tools for science teaching, such as sensors and simulations.

Digna Couso holds a degree in Physics (1999) and a PhD in Science Education (2009). She has been the director of CRECIM (Centro de Investigación para la Educación Científica y Matemática) and is currently the principal investigator of the research group ACELEC (Aprendizaje Científico Escolar: Lenguajes, Herramientas y Contextos). She has participated and led multiple research projects on teaching and learning of science and STEM, addressing issues such as the positioning of young people towards science, the design of learning situations that promote scientific practices of enquiry and modelling or critical thinking in the science classroom.

The volume will be presented next Friday 5 April at 5pm at the Faculty of Education Sciences of the UAB (Aula 51), in a seminar with the participation of Marta Bertran, dean of the Faculty, and the authors of the book. Didáctica de la física per a l'educació secundària obligatoria has been published by the Publications Service of the UAB in paper format for a fee and in free and open access electronic format.

The 42nd Catalan Book Week will take place from 20 to 29 September and, this year, it will be held, exceptionally, on Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona. A central, wide and easily accessible location, ideal for enjoying books and open-air activities.

Once again this year, the Publications Service of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona will be present through the Vives University Network (XVU). New publications such as Les arrels del capvepre, Tot un món en català, Didàctica de la física per a l’educació secundària obligatòria, o Càlcul en variable complexa, will be presented at module number 80, together with other publications from university publishers affiliated with the XVU.

The presentation of the winning works of the Joan Lluís Vives awards for university publishing 2024 is scheduled for Tuesday 23 September. The event will take place at 11:15 am, on stage 1.

Johari Gautier Carmona, journalist and author of the book El hechizo del tren, will give a lecture on February 21, at 7 p.m., in the Audiovisual Room of the Monastery Museum of Sant Cugat del Vallès (Pl. de l'Om, 1).

The talk, entitled "The protagonists of the first railway line in the Peninsula", will be based on his novel, which tells the story of the railroad from its beginnings in Latin America to its arrival in the Iberian Peninsula, through the experiences lived by its main promoters.

The conference is part of the Cycle of Conferences on the World of Trains, organized by the Associació d'Amics del Ferrocarril de Sant Cugat del Vallès and can also be followed live on the YouTube channel of the Federació Catalana d'Amics del Ferrocarril: youtube@canalFCAF6925.

Eduard Roure Blàvia, professor and writer from Lleida, will present his novel El metall i els turons, next Thursday, April 18, at 7 pm, at the bookstore La Fatal (Vallcalent street, 65, 25006 Lérida).

The event will include a reading of several fragments of the book and will be attended by Ester Graell, philologist and teacher; Mariona Roure, photographer and art historian; and the author.

The work is a modern fable, disguised as a thriller or western, and has been the winner of the XXIX Novel Prize "Valldaura-Memorial Pere Calders" of 2023, organized by the UAB and the City Council of Cerdanyola del Vallès. El metall i els turons, as Roure himself points out, is "a modern tale that revolves around the old story of the confrontation with power, in this case, provoked by the awareness for the conservation of the environment".

Eduard Roure Blàvia was born in Lérida in 1973 and teaches Catalan language and literature at the Manuel de Montsuar Secondary School in the same city. His works include: Les altes balconades (Pagès, 1999), Les Talúries prize for narrative; the short novel Lligall trobat a la Cabana (Proa, 2008), finalist for the Pere Calders prize; the novel L'última badia (Pagès, 2012), creation aid prize for the best novel project of the Narrativa Lleida Awards; and the novel La nit de les oques (Viena, 2016), Ciutat de Badalona prize for narrative. Currently, she collaborates as an article writer in the supplement Lectura del diari Segre.

Cecot Comerç ha publicat a la seva pàgina web una entrevista a Gabriel Izard amb motiu de l'aparició del seu darrer llibre, Innovación y liderazgo. El nacimiento del código de barras, editat pel Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

A l'entrevista, l'autor reflexiona sobre innovació i lideratge col·laboratiu i lliga la història del naixement del codi de barres amb l’actualitat, la importància de l'alt impacte de la tecnologia a les empreses i com és possible posar a la pràctica el concepte win-win (tots hi guanyen).

Gabriel Izard va néixer a Sabadell el 1956, és economista i ha estat professor de Màrqueting, Gestió de la Distribució, International Business i Business in Action a la UAB durant més de trenta anys. Ha estat quinze anys membre de l’Associació Espanyola de Codificació Comercial (Aecoc), on va participar en la creació del codi de barres. Actualment és delegat comercial a Espanya de l’empresa Axicon Auto ID, que desenvolupa i produeix equips de verificació de codis de barres arreu del món. A través de la seva experiència professional, l’autor relaciona el naixement del codi de barres i la seva incidència en la digitalització, la innovació i el lideratge empresarial.

Cecot Comerç està integrada per empresaris i empresàries dels diferents gremis i associacions empresarials que conformen la patronal catalana Cecot i representa directament 4.000 empreses del sector del comerç i prop de 120.000 treballadors. Aquesta entitat és una de les fundadores de la Unió d’Entitats de Retail de Catalunya · RETAILcat.

On April 17, Ràdio UNAL, belonging to the National University of Colombia (Bogotà), interviewed Julio Mario Hoyos and Juan Carlos Moreno, Biologist and Philosopher, respectively, and authors of the book Las claves de la investigación Científica, recently published by the Publications Service of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

The interview was included in the program Panorama de la Ciència, produced by the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, and can be listened to in full at the following link: https://radio.unal.edu.co/detalle/claves-para-entender-la-investigacion-cientifica

La publicació de referència sobre l'obra de Lope de Vega i la literatura del Segle d'Or espanyol que edita el grup de recerca Prolope del Departament de Filologia Espanyola commemora el número 30 amb dos monogràfics i una introducció especial sobre la història de la revista.

El primer monogràfic, titulat “Prácticas editoriales y sociabilidad literaria en torno a Lope de Vega” i coordinat per Ignacio García Aguilar, professor de la Universitat de Còrdova, pretén reflexionar sobre les tensions i els vincles, més o menys clientelars i d'institucionalització literària, que van influir en l'activitat creadora del Fénix de los Ingenios. El segon està coordinat per Elena Di Pinto, professora de la Universitat Complutense de Madrid. Amb el títol de “La alquimia en un mundo inventado: mixturas literarias en tiempos de Lope”, posa de manifest l'habitual i fructífera barreja d'arts a l'època de l'escriptor, que suposava una multitud de variacions, hibridacions i jocs de contrastos. El número 30 es completa amb dos articles més sobre un paper d'actor inèdit i sobre la modernització ortogràfica de textos del Segle d'Or automatitzada gràcies a la intel·ligència artificial.

L'Anuario Lope de Vega va ser fundat l’any 1995 pel que va ser professor de la UAB Alberto Blecua (1941-2020), fou dirigit per ell mateix i Guillermo Serés, i, successivament, pels professors Victoria Pineda, Enrico Di Pastena i Guillermo Gómez Sánchez-Ferrer. Sempre ha estat vinculat al Grup de recerca Prolope i a la UAB, tot i que ha rebut suports externs, com el de l'Editorial Milenio, que el va publicar en paper fins a l’any 2011. Des d'aquella data, la publicació s'ha difós en línia mitjançant la plataforma Revistes Digitals UAB (ReDi) del Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat.

En aquest recorregut de trenta anys i trenta números, l'Anuario Lope de Vega ha aconseguit assolir un prestigi en el seu àmbit de coneixement, tant a nivell nacional com internacional, amb l'obtenció ininterrompuda dels segells de qualitat i les avaluacions positives de les institucions més exigents. Tot això ha estat possible gràcies a la col·laboració d'autors, ressenyistes, avaluadors, correctors i lectors, que, en una tasca conjunta que suma més de 700 textos publicats, ha contribuït de manera decisiva a mantenir els treballs sobre Lope de Vega i el teatre del Segle d'Or en un nivell de recerca excel·lent i convertir-los en un lloc de referència per als estudis de lletres. La seva història demostra que ha sabut adaptar-se a les noves tecnologies i donar cabuda als estudiosos més joves, que han treballat amb els més autoritzats lopistes, cosa que li ha permès mantenir la vigència de la publicació i garantir un futur prometedor.

Next Friday, April 12, at 7.30 pm, Antonio Loriguillo López will present his book "Anime complejo. La ambigüedad narrativa en la animación japonesa", at the Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication of the Universitat de València (UV).

The book was published in 2021 and is number 43 of the collection on communication and ICT, Aldea Global, co-published by the Universitat de València, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Universitat Jaume I, and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

On the occasion of the recent recognition of the volume with the mention to the "Book where Asian Film, Media and Communication Sciences" in the IBP 2023 Portuguese/Spanish Language Edition granted by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the author will give this conference, organized by the Consulate General of Japan in Barcelona, Tradiasia Project, Universitat de València, and with the collaboration of Casa Asia, GREGAL-UAB and InterAsia.

About the book

Recognizable to successive generations of viewers around the world for the charm of its character design and simple animation, "anime" arrives in the second decade of the new millennium as one of the ambassadors of Japanese culture, a consumer good manufactured by one of the most important mass culture production centers on the planet. 

But is it a formulaic art, devoid of narrative sophistication? This book proposes an approach to complex narrative in "anime", a key feature in its construction as a cultural identity through series such as Evangelion or films such as Ghost in the Shell. Is this narrative complexity the reaction of producers to the threat of the interactivity of videogames? Does it obey a strategy that uses narrative experimentation in the multi-screen era to focus on its multiple market niches? Or is it the definitive hybridization of previously opposed narrative modes: classicism versus art and essay? 

Through the historical poetics of narrative modes and the tools of filmic analysis of narratology, Antonio Loriguillo suggests a brief chronology of complex "anime" in which we see that its narrative obscurity is key to its establishment as another type of narration in the global commercial audiovisual.

About the author

Antonio Loriguillo-López is Associate Professor at the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) and member of the ITACA research group at the same university, as well as the GREGAL research group (UAB) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He teaches in the degrees in Audiovisual Communication and in Video Game Design and Development, as well as in the Official Master in New Trends and Innovation Processes in Communication at the UJI. His research interests focus on post-classical storytelling in contemporary audiovisual and Japanese commercial animation. In this regard, he is the author of the monographs Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997): Guía para ver y analizar (Nau Llibres, 2020) and Anime complejo: la ambigüedad narrativa en la animación japonesa (Aldea Global, 2021).

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From Tuesday 1 to Thursday 3 October, Feria de Barcelona will host the 42nd edition of the International Book Fair (LIBER), promoted by the Federation of Publishers' Guilds of Spain (FGEE).

LIBER is one of the main trade fairs for the export, exhibition and promotion of publishing in Spanish. The event will bring together publishers of all subject areas who will present their bibliographic collections and novelties, and companies with products and services related to the production, marketing and distribution of books, as well as digital content (ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts), and professional associations.

Some of the latest new publications from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), such as Pensar con el paladar. Una estética gustatoria, by Jèssica Jaques and Gerard Vilar; Las claves de la investigación científica, by Julio Mario Hoyos and Juan Carlos Moreno, or Innovación y liderazgo. El nacimiento del código de barras, by Gabriel Izard, will be on display at the fair. As usual, the UAB Publications Service will be present at LIBER through the stands of the Unión de Editoriales Universitarias Españolas (UNE) and Pujol y Amadó Export.