Introduction: Alan Deyermond, 1932–2009

Summary

Quiero en estos arbores un ratiello sobir

(Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, 45a)

Alan Deyermond was one of the most prolific and influential hispanists of his generation, whose professional career spanned over five decades of teaching, research, and administration at the University of London, first at Westfield College then, following a college merger, at Queen Mary. It was at Westfield that he founded the renowned Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar (1967), and at Queen Mary that he started the Publications of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar (1995) and where, following his retirement, he became research professor and honorary fellow (1999). As a committed feminist and champion of women's rights and equality, Alan was a most appropriate appointment to Westfield College in 1955 since it had been founded as a women's college in 1882, accepting male students from 1964. He was appointed to a chair there in 1969, and was the College's Vice-Principal in 1986–9 during the years leading up to its merger with Queen Mary College on the Mile End Road. Alan's academic leadership, as scholar and organizer at local, national, and international levels, was recognized by his peers when he was elected a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1979), Fellow of the British Academy (1988), and a corresponding member of the Real Academia Española (2009).