Berkley Center

Rafael Escobedo is an associate professor of modern history at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain). He was a Berkley Center visiting researcher during the 2018-2019 academic year. Escobedo's research has focused on the attitudes and concerns of American Catholics towards Spain and Spanish Catholicism during Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). He has also published several papers on the role of public diplomacy in the Spanish-American relation during Franco’s rule, as well as about the situation of Spanish religious minorities. In 2015, he organized a conference in Pamplona, Spain, on religious freedom on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the encyclical Dignitatis Humanae. Escobedo has been a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, a visiting lecturer at the University of Piura (Peru), and an Erasmus exchange scholar at several European universities. Escobedo received his Ph.D. in history from the Universidad de Navarra in 2004.