Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Francisco García-Serrano earned his M.A and Ph.D. in Medieval Iberian History at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently a professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus.  In addition, he has been a visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley, New York University in Madrid, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

His research focuses on the influence of the Mendicant Orders in Spain during the late Middle Ages and on religious identity and interfaith relations. Francisco García-Serrano has published Preachers of the City. The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile, 1217-1348 (University Press of the South, 1997), and his most recent contributions to collective books include “Del convento al palacio: los frailes y las oligarquías castellanas (siglos XIII-XIV)”, in Isabel Beceiro Pita, dir., Poder, piedad y devoción. Castilla y su entorno (siglos XII-XV) (Silex, Madrid, 2014), and “The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon,” in Taryn Chubb and Emily Kelly, ed., Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean (Brill, 2013). His current book project, The Friars and Their Impact in Medieval Iberia, contains the collaboration of fifteen international specialists.

Professor García-Serrano also serves as the Director of Ibero-American Studies at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, an academic program that he created. In addition he is the current president of the interdisciplinary association AHLiST (2012-2015) and has organized a number of international conferences.