Περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ

I was born in the Mediterranean city of Barcelona, the city where I spent most of my first 40 years of life before moving to the UK. I studied Classics at the Universitat de Barcelona (BA 1985, PhD 1991) and at the University of Sheffield (MA 1986). My current position is Senior Language Tutor in Greek and Latin at the University of St Andrews (UK), where I am in charge of the teaching of these two languages. Formerly, I was teaching (also Greek and Latin) at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Classics, from 2003 to 2007.

My main teaching activities with undergraduates at St Andrews are distributed into three areas:

1/  First-year students who either start any of both languages (or both at the same time) from scratch in an intensive course or have already taken an A-level (or equivalent) at high school and engage here in language-reinforcement classes.
2/  Second year students who go on having language-reinforcement classes (whether they started the language from scratch in their first year or not).
3/  Teaching of Greek Prose Composition and Latin Prose Composition to third- and fourth- year students.

I also teach graduate students who start either language from scratch.

Apart from these teaching activities, I carry out other duties like supervising a PhD thesis (at another university, not at my own) about the teaching of Latin, and the usual administrative duties that any academic position implies. And, obviously, the production of new materials like for instance the grammars about which I speak in the section "About my books", their correspondent books of exercises, books on vocabulary, etc. (see my other website for all this, as there is more stuff than just the grammars).

About a more personal level of activities not related to Greek and Latin, many years ago I started writing a World History book that will cover from the very beginning (the Big Bang; in spite of trying really hard, I have not managed to start from before; if you would like to know about even before, please get in touch with Stephen Hawking, University of Cambridge) to the events we are living nowadays; in this book I try to deal with the most important events, but trying at the same time to keep a line of continuity. I am doing it in a somehow old-fashioned way, the kind of History you were taught at school decades ago, instead of following the modern historical tendencies, and I include some personal comments; it will be a kind of "Commented World History”. Of what I have written up to now, the part I like most is the first pages dedicated to the very first minute of the Universe. Of course, after my incorporation at the University of Oxford first and at the University of St. Andrews later my free time has been drastically reduced to something symbolic, so you will have to wait if you want to read my book. Currently, the project is stopped, as I am too entangled in my own job and studies, sport life, etc.

Also the study of foreign languages has always been one of my favourite activities, especially German and Russian, and the study of Chinese which I started around 2021 is also taking a good part of my scarce free time.

Marathon training took from me a lot of  time every day, especially as I also like studying about sport functional anatomy, sport injuries, treatment methods, etc. Nevertheless, a terrible injury in January 2017 when I was preparing for Copenhague Marathon in May for second time put an end to my intensive marathon dedication (in the category that could be called "high-intensity amateur"), after the best five years (with the exception of the intensive 1988) I have got in my life sportswise (2012-2016), although I go on running almost daily (but not with two daily training sessions, speed series on the track, etc.). Firenze Marathon in November 2016 was my last one, the injury came while preparing for the next one; I did not self-retire, nature retired me...

Personal best times:
• In Marathon: 2 h 52 min 21 sec, Firenze Marathon, Italy, 30th of November 2014 (three consecutive years beating my personal record).
• In Half-Marathon: 1 h 18 min 48 sec, Half-Marathon of Sant Cugat (Barcelona), January 1988.