I study recurrent conceptual patterns of affective meaning in verbal creativity (poetic imagery, conventional figurative expressions), art, and other modalities. My approach combines theoretical background from cognitive science (conceptual integration,  image schemas) with methodologies from the humanities and the social sciences (comparative literature, literary theory, linguistics, philology, classics, archaeology, semiotics, philosophy, psychology, etc.).

        My PhD dissertation modeled one of these recurrent patterns, the erotic emission, by means of a generic integration network, across examples of imagery in Greek love poetry, from Antiquity to the 20th century. My Marie Curie Project, The Narrative Lyric (NARLYR), continues this research by identifying more generic networks in the figurative language of emotions, and comparing them across a variety of literatures and periods. I also explore some of these patterns of creative thought in other modalities, like art or ritual. I investigate the origins of these cognitive habits in spatial cognition and early development, and link them to interdisciplinary research on the emotions. Cultural and individual variation in the realization of these templates is also key to the project.

            Studying creativity, verbal art, and affective meaning, that is, some of the defining characteristics of the human, requires an interdisciplinary background indeed. Classics, itself highly interdisciplinary (philology, linguistics, history, archaeology, etc.), is my original field, and I continuously rely on my Greek and Latin studies. My interest in all things Greek also led me to modern Greek, in search for a more comprehensive experience of the culture. I have lived and studied in Greece, and have become a teacher and translator of modern Greek language and literature. I have also designed Greek didactic materials, and collaborated in a variety of related projects. This connects with my other "modern" interests: I have also studied Spanish, English, and French language and literature, and taught English and Spanish for several years.

            Cognitive science and linguistics have provided me with some of my major scientific and empirical methodologies, and allowed me to connect my research to fascinating questions in history, philosophy, psychology, etc. My Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship includes a two-year stay at the two leading research groups in conceptual integration, based in the Cognitive Science Departments of Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio, and the University of California San Diego. Both places have a strong interest in the cognitive operations underlying creativity.

            Regarding literary creation itself, the literary journal Paralelo Sur, from Barcelona, awarded me its prize for narrative and published my first short story, Retorno tercero, in 2008.