Full Professor of Literature at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). Before that, I was Associate Professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Arts and Humanities Dept. (1998-2018), where I started up the Catalan literature website Lletra (lletra.uoc.edu). My main research topics are contemporary literature, history and sociology of culture, and Catalan studies. I am a member of IdentiCat (Language, Culture and Identity in the Global Age) research group, and GECC (Grup d'Estudis de Cultura Catalana) at UPF. I was visiting scholar at Duke University, and visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, Brown University, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, and Trinity College, Hartford. Also stayed as a researcher at the Unit of Culture Research of Tel Aviv University (2010, with Itamar Even-Zohar), and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of the University of Chicago (2017).
I am interested in the space of confluence between literature, writers, community and public recognition. I just published a short essay on the subject under the title Literatura, lengua y lugar. Termodinámica aplicada (Anagrama).
Director of Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (2004-2006), and Vicepresident of PEN Català (2018-2022). From 2022 to 2024 I served as Vice-director of the Humanities Department at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
I have translated into Catalan the poetry of, among others, Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Ted Kooser, Berta Piñán, Gary Snyder or R.L. Stevenson.
Publications
- Literatura, lengua y lugar. Termodinámica aplicada. Anagrama, 2025 (https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/nuevos-cuadernos-anagrama/literatura-lengua-y-lugar/9788433946577/NCA_94)
- Literatura, llengua i lloc. Termodinàmica aplicada. Anagrama, 2025 (https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/nuevos-cuadernos-anagrama/literatura-lengua-i-lloc/9788433947161/NCA_93)
- Diana Roig-Sanz, J. Subirans (eds.), Cultural Organizations, Networks and Mediators in Contemporary Ibero-America. Routledge, 2020 (https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Organizations-Networks-and-Mediators-in-Contemporary-Ibero-America/Roig-Sanz-Subirana/p/book/9781032176031?srsltid=AfmBOor8T2RTSowW2OjW3g6m9cGqR-abJrRZzMNoCPMEmB46lSsAkkZj)
- Construir con palabras. Escritores, literatura e identidad en Cataluña (1859-2019). Cátedra, 2018 (https://www.catedra.com/libro/critica-y-estudios-literarios/construir-con-palabras-jaume-subirana-9788437638676/)
- Enric Bou, J. Subirana (eds.), The Barcelona Reader. Cultural Readings of a City. Liverpool University Press, 2017 (https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/9781786940322)