Barry Ife

Professor Barry Ife is a cultural historian who specialises in the literature, history, art and music of Spain and Spanish America from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

He graduated from King’s College London in 1986 and taught at Nottingham University and Birkbeck College London before returning to King’s as Cervantes Professor of Spanish in 1988. He served as Head of the School of Humanities, Vice-Principal for Arts and Sciences and Acting Principal before becoming Principal of the Guildhall School in 2004.

At Guildhall he repositioned the School within the higher education sector, gained Taught Degree-Awarding powers, and revived and strengthened strategic partnerships with a range of performing arts organisations including the Barbican Centre, LSO and the Royal Opera House. In 2013 he realised the School’s long-held ambition to build additional state-of-the-art performance, rehearsal and teaching facilities at Milton Court. He retired from the Principalship in 2017 but since then has been retained by the School as Research Professor on a part-time basis.

At King’s, Professor Ife specialised in the literature, history and music of the Spanish Golden Age with particular reference to prose fiction and drama. Since joining Guildhall he has broadened his interests to include performative aspects of prose fiction and intermediality, and has resumed his previous work on early Spanish keyboard music. Current projects include a book—Speaking Prose—on the voice in Cervantes, and ‘Texting Scarlatti’, the first comprehensive study of all surviving eighteenth-century manuscript and printed copies of Scarlatti’s 555 keyboard sonatas.

Since losing his hearing during the pandemic, Barry has developed a serious interest in art history and is currently working on representations of Spain in the work of English artist-travellers during the 1830s, particularly Harriet Ford and George Vivian. In the autumn of 2023 he co-curated an exhibition—Impressions of Spain—with the art historian Claudia Hopkins, and is currently collaborating with her on an enlarged online version of that show.

Barry Ife was appointed CBE in the 2000 birthday honours for services to Hispanic studies, received a knighthood in 2017 for services to performing arts education, and in 2021 was made Knight Commander of the Order of Isabel La Católica by HM King Felipe VI of Spain.