New directors at the Cervantes Institutes of Naples, Cairo and Tunis

The Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, has appointed, at the proposal of the Secretary General, Carmen Noguero, with the agreement of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Chair of the Governing Board, Pilar Cancela, and after hearing the Governing Board, new directors of the centres in Cairo, Naples and Tunis.

The appointments, made after a selection process following a public call for applications, are as follows:

Cairo: José Manual Alba Pastor (Madrid, 1966). He holds a degree in Semitic Philology, specialising in Arabic and Islam, from the Complutense University of Madrid. Since 1997 he has been head of studies at the Cervantes Institutes in Brussels, Athens, Utrecht, Brussels, Naples and, until now, Tel Aviv. He is a specialist in methodological innovation and renovation of the administrative processes of the DELE exams (Diplomas in Spanish as a Foreign Language).

Naples: Ana Navarro Ortega (Almería, 1971). Degree in Humanities, Master in Archaeology and Heritage, and PhD in Social Sciences. Since 2002 she has been a career civil servant of the Junta de Andalucía as a museum curator. Director of the Museum of Almería (2005-2013) and the Archaeological Museum of Seville (2013-2018). Currently on leave of absence, she has been living in Italy for several years and has worked as a cultural manager and independent researcher. She has taught at the Universitá La Sapienza and the Scuola Normale Superiore di la Universitá di Pisa (Italy), International Burch University (Serbia), Ghent University (Brussels) and the universities of Granada, Cádiz and Almería, among others.

Tunisia: Germinal Gil de Gracia (Madrid, 1971). He holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Seville, a diploma in French Language from the Language Institute of the University of Seville and a master's degree in International Relations: Mediterranean, Arab World and Latin America. He has spent much of his professional career at the Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo, where he has been responsible for and coordinated projects, including the Observatory for Migration and the Promotion of Intercultural Dialogue and the World Congress on Middle Eastern and North African Studies (WOCMES).

Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.