María Teresa Méndez Baiges, new director of the Spanish Academy in Rome

Eduardo González The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has appointed Spanish professor and researcher María Teresa Méndez Baiges to the position of director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, according to the Official State Gazette (BOE) published this Wednesday. Born in Jaén in 1964, Maite Méndez Baiges is a professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Málaga (UMA), and her fields of study include the history, theory, and aesthetics of modern and contemporary art and architecture. She is also the director of the UMA's University Institute for Gender and Equality Research. In addition, she has been a visiting researcher or participated in conferences at the University of Michigan, La Sapienza University, the Spanish Academy in Rome, the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, the University of Northern Iowa, the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Art de Bourges, the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, the University of Barcelona, the School of Architecture of Seville, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Maite Méndez will take up a position for which up to two calls for applications were required. On April 25, 2024, the BOE published a The first call for applications for the position of Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, under the Ministry. However, the new team at the Undersecretariat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently warned that the call for applications contained technical errors. For this reason, on October 15, it adopted a Resolution, published in the BOE on October 21, correcting the initial resolution of April 8. As a result, according to sources familiar with the procedure who spoke to The Diplomat, one of the applicants filed an appeal requesting the annulment of the published correction of errors and the selection process followed, and the announcement of a new selection process. Finally, according to diplomatic sources who spoke to The Diplomat, the previous selection process was annulled, and the Ministry therefore announced a new call for applications on January 24.

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