Fernando Riva's research investigates the process of appropriation and absorption of Arabic and Jewish knowledge in vernacular Iberian literatures in the Middle Ages. This process of appropriation and absorption has two distinct aspects. The first type appears as a tense reaction against the social and intellectual changes of the twelve and thirteenth centuries as portrayed in several cuaderna vía poems. The second type emerges as a conscious reinterpretation which seeks to support an imperial project such as that of King Alfonso the Wise. His first book, published in May of 2019 in Spain, which has been reviewed in top-tier international journals, concerns the first type of appropriation and absorption: it analyzes the concept of knowledge in the thirteenth-century Spanish work known as Libro de Alexandre (c. 1220-1235), where he studied the role played by intellectual curiosity and its relation with the deep cultural changes that began in the twelfth century throughout the Mediterranean. His current research project, which is under contract with the University of Toronto Press, is derived from his first book and deals with the second type of appropriation and absorption, i.e., the fruitful reinterpretation of magic, astrology, natural philosophy, the discourse of secrets, and their relation to a political project in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. As part of a solid continuity in his research, this second book will complement the first one and attempt to offer a whole analysis of the literary and cultural phenomena in thirteenth-century Christian Iberia. These dynamics of appropriation, in turn, will lay the foundation for the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period. In that sense, his research is relevant to debates on medieval intellectual history, religious studies, history of science, translation studies, and the growing field of Mediterranean studies.