Close-ups

What do you teach at Ca’ Foscari? What are your main research interests? 
I am Eugenia Sainz, Spanish, born in Santander, a beautiful city with a beautiful beach in northern Spain, on the Atlantic coast. I graduated from the University of Deusto (Bilbao) and did my PhD at the Autonomous University of Madrid with a great teacher, Professor José Portolés. My research interests mainly concern pragmatics, especially the relations between pragmatics and syntax, discourse analysis, discourse markers and procedural semantics.

Have you always known that this was going to be your path?
Actually, no. I liked (and still like) the publishing industry. My dream was to work at a publisher, so I also did a short degree in editing and publishing. I loved the courses and the professors. I was young, passionate and the idea of always working in the company of so many beautiful books seemed like the best thing in the world.

What is the aspect of your research you are most passionate about?
I like everything about language. I like it because it always surprises me. Language is all encrypted - as Baltasar Gracian would surely have said in seventeenth-century Spain - and research consists in discovering the secret hidden code that suddenly makes everything clear and consistent. We researchers are a bit of a detective, research is a detective story.

What has given you the greatest satisfaction in your career?
Certainly the excitement that I sometimes see in the eyes of my students. Their questions. Their satisfaction with a job well done. Running into them after years and hearing an affectionate "Hi prof!" is the best gift.

The area you have always wanted to be involved in but have not yet had the opportunity to explore?
So many! I will never be able to learn all the things I wanted to learn. But if I had to choose one, I would say History of Spain, especially the discovery of America, the Second Republic and the Civil War. These are topics that interest me a lot and I read about them whenever I get some spare time.

Why Ca’ Foscari and Venice?
Ca' Foscari was a random choice for me, but now it is part of me: the classes, the students, the colleagues, the research, the city. Ca' Foscari is knowledge, curiosity, creativity, sharing, multilingualism. Ca' Foscari is a lifestyle and a mindset: honest, kind, cheerful and above all curious, open to others.