Romance Language Collections
French, Francophone, Spanish, Portuguese, Lusophone, and Italian
Subject Librarian: Andrea Meyer Ludowisy
Email: Andrea.Meyerludowisy@london.ac.uk
Phone: 020 7862 8969
Collection Description
Senate House Library offers a wide-ranging and globally relevant collection in the Romance languages, supporting the study of literature, linguistics, and culture across Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These holdings are essential for work in comparative literature, postcolonial studies, transmigration, and identity studies.
The collections include contemporary primary literature, literary criticism, lexicographical resources, and historical works, with a strong focus on language evolution and cultural hybridity. A central concern is supporting research into transmigrational literatures and the creative contributions of Black African and African diasporic writers across French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.
The Library also holds important materials in minority and regional languages, most notably the Gili Catalan Collection—a cornerstone of Catalan literary studies in the UK.
Locating and accessing material
The best way to start finding history resources at Senate House Library is to use the catalogue.
The language collections are located on the 5th floor. New acquisitions for the collections are shelved in the Periodicals Room on the 4th floor. Books and journals held in the stacks and off-site can be requested through the fetch service on the catalogue.
Find collection locations through
Ebooks can be found by searching the .
E-resources and databases for history are listed on the on our LibGuides platform.
Special collections and archive material must be and consulted in the special collections reading room. Some of these collections are available as part of our e-Resources. They can be found on our list of on our LibGuides platform.