BIO
Carmen Sanz Ayán is Professor of Modern History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a full member of Spain’s Real Academia de la Historia. A specialist in the sociocultural history of the modern era, she has led more than a dozen research projects focused on economic and social history and the study of the elites operating in Europe and the Americas during the Modern Age, and has organized around fifty seminars and conferences. Her recent books include Cruzando la raya estrecha de la aguja y la almohadilla: mujeres emprendedoras (siglos XVI-XVII) and Carlos II, el último Austria. Director of the “Historia” series of publisher Ediciones Complutense and the journal Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, she also founded and heads the research groups NOBINCIS and HERMESP. Among other distinctions, she has received the Ortega y Gasset Prize for Essay and Humanities and the National History Prize for her book Los banqueros y la crisis de la monarquía hispánica de 1640.
