About
I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge, and then moved to the University of Leeds where I was Lecturer in Latin American Literature and Culture. I subsequently joined the University of Liverpool in 2004, and am now Gilmour Chair of Spanish. I specialise in modern Latin American literature and culture. I teach across a wide range of modules, and research in areas including memory studies, digital culture and women's writing in Latin America.
I would be interested to hear from potential research students with interests in twentieth and twenty-first century literature, cinema and culture from Latin America, with particular focuses on Argentina, Chile, and Colombia; in digital culture in Latin America, particularly net art, hacktivism, and digital ethnography; or those wanting to work on comparative approaches to digital culture studies, studies of memorials and memorialisation, women's writing, or legacies of dictatorship. See further information under the 'Research' tab.
Recent successfully defended PhD theses:
Sarah Parry (E. Allison Peers-funded), Caution and Distortion: Consuming Narratives of Violent Fourth World Space and Inhabitants in Colombian Cultural Products 1990-2005. Awarded 2014
Florence Bögelein, L’art de la cruauté: mythologies filmiques au regard du cinéma français contemporain. Awarded 2015.
Jennifer Rodríguez (E. Allison Peers- and Leverhulme-funded). The Marketing and Reception of Women Writers in the Twenty-first Century Spanish Nation-State. Awarded 2016.
Ailsa Peate (E. Allison Peers-Santander funded), Mask and Disguise: Dismembering Bodies, Sexuality, and Genre in Hispanic Detective Fiction. Awarded 2017.
Will Halbert (E. Allison Peers-funded), Play, Space and Idealized Reader Constructs in Contemporary Argentine Fiction: Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ana María Shua and Belén Gache. Awarded 2017.
Tracey Morse, Deconstructing Patriarchy: Men and Masculinities in Twentieth-Century Mexican Women's Writing. Awarded 2017.
Lucía Brandi, Young Speakers of Mexican Indigenous Languages: Contesting Language Ideologies and Policies. Awarded 2018.
Grace Gaynor (Irish Studies Grant-funded), The Shared Geometric Visions of Jorge Luis Borges and William Butler Yeats. Awarded 2021.
William Condiza (self-funded), Educación y prácticas de la memoria: voces de mujeres sobre el conflicto armado en Boyacá, Colombia, 2005-2018. Awarded 2022 (as international co-supervisor).
Thomas Olver (AHRC-funded) Moving Past Patria: Locating Memory in Contemporary Basque Literature. Awarded 2023.
Sheneez Amara (ESCR-funded), Doing Unsettling Work: An Autoethnographic Study of Decolonising the University Rooted in the Thought of Sylvia Wynter. Awarded 2024.
John McInally (AHRC-funded), Memory for the Masses? Authorship, Editorship and Publication Strategies of Rwandan Genocide Survivor Testimonies. Awarded 2024.
Natalia Andrea Palomá, Principios curriculares para fomentar la participación de niñas y mujeres adolescentes en las matemáticas, UPTC, Colombia. Awarded 2024 (as international co-supervisor).
Metin Senel (Turkey Government-Funded), Collective Memory, Social Trauma, and Cinematic Presentation: Military Dictatorships in Latin American Cinema. Awarded 2025.
Tatiana Wells (HLC Studentship-Funded); MPhil. Digitofagia Sub¬Xamânica: A Compilation of Tactical Archives and Practices in Brazil ¬in Disruption of His¬tory. Awarded 2025.
Andrés Javier Bustos Ramírez, Literatura en la escuela, una apuesta por la educación en derechos humanos y la resignificación de las memorias en Colombia, UPTC, Colombia. Awarded 2025 (as international co-supervisor).