UAB and UB co-publication on Catalan literature voted top Arts & Humanities book by the Vives Network
The co-publication by the UAB Publication Service and the UB Editions entitled Literatura catalana de la postmodernitat (volumes I and II) was awarded the Joan Lluís Vives Award for University Publications 2026 for best book in the Arts & Humanities category. These awards, which annually recognise the best works published by the member universities of the Vives Network of Universities, were presented on 3 July at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia. The authors of the work are lecturers at the UAB.
The winning work, entitled Literatura catalana de la postmodernitat (volums I i II) was coordinated by Jordi Marrugat, Víctor Martínez-Gil and Núria Santamaria, lecturers in Catalan Studies at the UAB. The book constitutes the first general history of Catalan literature from the 1960s to the present day. With the participation of more than fifty specialists, it offers a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the main literary genres, the cultural and institutional frameworks, and the processes of transformation within contemporary Catalan literature.
The work is organised into seven parts distributed across two volumes: the first analyses the construction of postmodern Catalan literature—in terms of both creation and the establishment of an institutional network responding to the new cultural context, both domestic and international—and subsequently examines narrative genres.
The second volume covers non-fiction, poetry, drama, experimentalism, and key episodes in the reception and translation of foreign literature into Catalan. Literatura catalana de la postmodernitat is a reference work that offers a solid foundation for understanding the literary output of contemporary authors and, for the first time, places Catalan literary studies of this period within an international framework.
The award was accepted by the rectors of both institutions, Javier Lafuente Sacho and Joan Guàrdia Olmos, during the ceremony for the presentation of the Vives Network of Universities Medal of Honour, held at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia on 3 July. In this edition, the jury also awarded four other works in the categories of best science and technology book, best social sciences book, best inter-network co-publication, and best edition.
Award to a volume written by lecturer and philosopher Pere Lluís Font
During the event, the award for the best inter-network co-publication was awarded to Pere Lluís Font, for his work La filosofia al natural. Font recently received the Honorary Award for Catalan Literature and was a lecturer in Philosophy at the UAB from 1968 until his retirement in 2004, as well as UAB vice-rector. Published jointly by the University of Barcelona Press and the University of Lleida Press, this book champions "philosophy in the raw"—that is, without artifice—employing a style that acknowledges its specific epistemological characteristics while eschewing rhetoric.
The Joan Lluís Vives Awards aim to highlight the quality of university publishing and its contribution to knowledge transfer and the promotion of Catalan as an academic language.