Luisa Elena Alcalá is Associate Professor in the Department of the History and Theory of Art of the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. Before moving to Spain, she studied at Yale College and obtained her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts (New York University, 1998). Her research focuses on Latin American colonial art, especially Mexican painting of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its relationship to issues of religious practices and experience, and the way in which global circulation impacted and shaped the Hispanic world, especially through Jesuit agency. Prof. Alcalá has held fellowships from CASVA (National Gallery, Washington DC) and Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), and she has been a Visiting Professor at I Tatti (Harvard University, Florence). She has edited the volume Fundaciones Jesuíticas en Iberoamérica and co-edited, with Jonathan Brown, Painting in Latin America. She recently published her monograph La Virgen de Loreto en México. La Localización de un culto global, and the coedited volume published with Benito Navarrete, América en Madrid: cultura material, arte e imágenes. She currently directs the research group Agents: Jesuit Procurators and Alternative Channels for Artistic Circulation in the Hispanic World.
