Alejandro M. Sanz Guillén is a predoctoral fellow and PhD candidate in Art History at University of Zaragoza (Spain). He belongs to the interdisciplinary research group Grupo de investigación Japón (https://gi-japon.unizar.es) and the research group Japón y España: relaciones a través del arte (http://jye.unizar.es/), both attached to the University of Zaragoza.

His current PhD project focuses on the construction of the image of Japan in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The main source of analysis are the illustrated books published in all Europe during this period, considering prints and graphic art as media for the diffusion of iconographic models in Western countries during the Baroque and the Enlightenment. 

Alejandro explores how the images about Japan were built in Europe and how those stereotypes evolved. From the first prints and texts created and published by the catholic missionaries during the Namban period (1543-1639) to the illustrated books written by the workers of the Dutch East India Company until the end of the eighteenth century. 

This research is approached from an interdisciplinary methodology, starting from Visual Studies, working on issues such as identity and the representation of "Otherness".

He combines his approach with other historiographical lines such as Cultural History, analysing historical concepts such as identity, race and perception. His approach also incorporates the History of Mentalities, addressing the study of European thought and perception in the early modern period and exploring the influence of Japanese culture on the European intellectual and cultural base.