Professor Lauro Zavala is a member of the Mexican Academy of Science (AMC), the American Academy of Spanish Language (ANLE), and the National System of Researchers (SNI). Guest Lecturer at New York University (NYU). President of the Mexican Society for Film Theory / Permanent Seminar on Film Analysis (Sepancine) since its creation in 2008. Creator of over 120 models for semiotic analysis, including a neoformalist model for studying classic, modern, and postmodern narrative, especially regarding metafiction, minifiction, intertextuality and irony in literature and film.

He has a Ph.D. on Hispanic Literature from El Colegio de México, and since 1984 he has been a Professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) Xochimilco Campus, in Mexico City. At the Education and Communication Department, he teaches the Undergraduate Program of Intertextual Semiotics and Film as a Tool for Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching, where he has tutored 198 dissertations.

Author of 65 books on narrative theory in film and literature. Out of these, 27 have been written as a unique author; 2 were written in collaboration, in 16 he is the editor, in 1 he is the translator, in 18 he is the anthologist of a short story, minifiction, and other very short literary genres.

His books and articles have been translated into 12 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Greek, Mixe, Mixteco, Zapoteco, Hungarian, and Korean. His research books have been published in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, China, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, England, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Uruguay.

His most recent individual books are the following: For Analyzing Film and literature (EBE, Madrid, 2018); Principles of Narrative Theory (UNAM, 2017); The Enlightening Seduction: Theory and practice of Film Analysis (Trillas, 2nd. ed., 2014); Preliminary Semitics. Essays and Conjectures (FOEM, 2015); Instructions to Kill a Professor. Vignettes of Scholarly Life (Praxis, 2007), and Studying the Short Story (Trillas, 2ª ed., 2019).

His Works have been quoted in more than 3,200 books and research essays in 24 countries. He has been invited to teach 72 courses and 180 conferences in 32 universities in Mexico and 40 universities in other 20 countries. He has published more than 150 individual articles in scholarly journals and more than 120 book chapters in 26 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Guatemala, Holland, Honduras, Hungary, Korea, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Switzerland, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

His most recent individual books are:

• Semiótica preliminar (FOEM, 2015)
• Principios de teoría narrativa (UNAM, 2018)
• Semiótica fronteriza (FOEM, 2022)
• Estética y semiótica del cine. Hacia una teoría paradigmática (UNAM, 2023)
• Pasajero en tránsito. Experiencias infrecuentes de un viajero frecuente (Municipio de Querétaro, 2023)
• El placer del cine. Conversaciones sobre análisis cinematográfico (UAMX, 2023)