Dr. Veronica Menaldi is a globetrotting Latina-American born of Argentine immigrants with a passion for bringing the past to life. She is a polyglot and an award-winning scholar and educator with a PhD in Hispanic literatures and cultures from the University of Minnesota, where she also earned funding from the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship and the Critical Language Scholarship program in Morocco, among others. Veronica is the vice president of the Societas Magica and the author of Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature, in addition to numerous academic and public humanities articles. Her research focuses on socioreligious cultural contact originating from the Iberian Peninsula, examining cultural exchanges over the centuries through the lens of food and magic—from talismans to tarot. 

Having done research in/on Spain, Portugal, Morocco, France, Italy, and many countries in Latin America, and elsewhere, she has taught courses and given lectures on the rich histories, literatures, and cultures of Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic to high schoolers, university students, scholars, and the general public.