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I graduated from NUI Galway with a BA in Irish and Spanish and then undertook an MA by Research at University College Dublin with a thesis on the surrealist prose poetry of acclaimed Spanish poet, Vicente Aleixandre. In 1996 I was awarded a PhD from the University of Glasgow on the notion of the monstrous feminine in the work of Mexican writer, Rosario Castellanos. This was later revised for publication as The Monstrous Feminine in the Writing of Rosario Castellanos (2001).

As Professor of Spanish since 2008, my research is internationally recognized through my publications, my research supervision, project management experience, peer-esteem indicators, public engagement and as director of a successful research centre, Ireland’s only Centre for Mexican Studies. In my capacity as researcher, I have been an invited keynote speaker at a range of national and international conferences, seminars and workshops. I have served as External Examiner on numerous PhD boards and have been an expert reviewer for numerous international journals. I have supervised 13 PhD students to completion, a large number of Masters theses and am currently supervising 8 research students 4 of whom are co-supervised. I currently serve as Chair to the Association of Mexican Studies in Ireland of which I was co-founder. My teaching interests include Latino fiction, Latin American cinema, feminist theory as well as a final year module on Gender, Violence and Culture on the US-Mexican border.

My research areas cover modern and contemporary Mexican and Mexican American cultural studies with a particular focus on gender. I am Director of the Centre for Mexican Studies where I have led a number of research projects including the Boom Femenino: Reading Contemporary Mexican Women’s Writing (2010) and Transitions and Continuities in Contemporary Chicano/a Culture (2011). Current projects include an edited collection of essays on Juan Rulfo (Rethinking Juan Rulfo's Creative World: Prose, Fiction, Photography) with Dylan Brennan and a larger scale research project on cultural responses to femicide in the US-Mexico border city of Ciudad Juárez.

I work as a referee for numerous journals in my field including

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (BHS), Bulletin of Latin American Research (BLAR), Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies (JILAS), Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Journal of Feminist Research, Journal of Inter-American Studies Association (FIAR), Hispanic Research Journal, Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies and the Journal of Transnational American Studies. I was

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Research Interests

My research interests span a number of areas but are primarily located in the area of Mexican cultural studies with a particular emphasis on literature and visual culture including film, photography and art. Most of these research activities are channelled through my direction (since 1999) of the Centre for Mexican Studies, based in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies. Established in 1997, the centre functions as a research and teaching focus for the department and as a wider university (and community) focus for interest in Mexico. It thus forms an important point of contact with other departments and faculties in U.C.C. and with the wider community of Irish and international organizations and institutions interested in Mexico.

 At present the direction of the Centre involves all of the following activities:

•  Co-ordination of series of research events – conferences, colloquia, symposia, readings and seminar series of visiting speakers, writers and artists

• Preparation of applications for research funding to various bodies – funding of varying levels has been received from the Office of the President, U.C.C, E.I.L. and Volunteer Abroad, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Mexico, Embassy of Mexico in Ireland, Bank of Ireland, HLA Nathans Financial among others.

• Development of academic links with Mexico. Currently overseeing signing of Cátedra John Huston de cine y literatura UDG-UCC to promote research collaboration (2014-2018); negotiating agreements with ITESM – Tecnológico de Monterrey and UNAM – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, CESAN – Centro de Estudios de América del Norte – Claire Joysmith

• Cátedra Juan Rulfo. Fundación Juan Rulfo, Mexico D.F.. Led by Victor Jiménez. Involves collaboration with Fundación and other international partners, Stanford and the University of Tokyo.

• Liaison with Embassy of Mexico who offer vital support to the Centre’s activities.

• Promotion of Centre nationally and abroad. In June 2007, I took part in major publicity exercise conducting an interview with journalists from Mexican major national daily newspaper, La Reforma and participating in a TV promotional segment for U.C.C. and the Centre for Mexican Studies. Extensive article on Higher Education in Ireland appeared in June 2007 in which major emphasis was placed on the activities and students of the Centre for Mexican Studies along with photographs of some of the Centre’s postgraduate students

• Outreach activities including collaboration with external bodies such as E.I.L Intercultural Learning and their affiliated project, Volunteer Abroad with projects in Mexico.

• Hosting of visual arts exhibitions on Mexico open to the public. The role played by exhibitions of this nature is integral to the work of the Centre in that they showcase excellent contemporary work on Mexico to the university and wider community and are also integrated into undergraduate teaching programmes thereby facilitating undergraduate and graduate understanding of Mexico and the wider cultures of Latin America: Exhibitions thus far have featured work by artists, Leonel Maciel and Nishizawa and photographers, Elsi Pérez Jarillo, Maeve Hickey, Tina Modotti, Graciela Iturbide among others. Recent exhibitions include Alma López, Celia Herrera Rodríguez (2011) Cora Murphy (2012); Rubén Ochoa (2012); Yamina del Real (2014)

• Collaboration with external bodies such as Munster Literature Centre, Tigh Filí, Cork City Library, Fastnet Film Festival, Cork Film Festival, ISLA – Irish, Spanish and Latin American Literary Festival in association with the Instituto Cervantes, among others. The Aztec art prints on display in the O’Rahilly building are on permanent loan to the Centre for Mexican studies from the Munster Literature Centre. 

Current Projects

Investigating Cultural Responses to femicide in Ciudad Juárez

I am currently completing a monograph provisionally entitled, The Meanings of Murder: Cultural Responses to Femicide in Ciudad Juárez with a particular focus on artistic and visual responses in the form of detective fiction, documentary cinema, art as well as gestures of commemoration and memorialisation. This project involves a major public engagement dimension and has included to date public lectures and interviews, film screenings, readings, documentary involvement, various grant applications, among other activities.

•  

  monograph in progress: The Meanings of Murder: Cultural Responses to the Ciudad Juárez Femicides (3 chapters completed). For completion 2015;

• edited book chapter: 

  ‘Moving Subjects: The Politics of Death in Narratives of the Juárez Murders’ in Catherine Leen and Niamh Thornton (eds.) "This World is My Place": International Perspectives on Chicana/o Studies. London: Routledge 2014: 88-108;

• documentary film: 'Mass Murder in Mexico', What in the World Series (broadcast RTE 4th Dec 2013) in collaboration with Peadar King;
• plenary or invited lectures in: Queen's University Belfast (Nov 2012);University of Nantes (April 2013); University of Groningen (Nov 2014); the Institute of Advanced Study, London (Sept 2014); the Allison Peers Memorial Lecture, University of Liverpool (Sept 2013);
• IRC advanced project grant application to lead the creation of a digital archive of materials relating to the femicides (deemed unsuccessful but very highly ranked just outside funded project threshold);
• research events hosted by the Centre for Mexican Studies: The Violent Border (Research Symposium, Feb 2013) and Violence, Trauma and Performance in the Hispanic World (Research Symposium and Graduate School Master Class 8th -9th  May 2014);
• ongoing doctoral projects;
• research collaboration with colleagues at the University of Groningen, University of Nantes, New York University, University of California, Los Angeles and Queen’s University Belfast;

• public engagement activities including Death on the Border, a collaboration with Amnesty International involving a public lecture, readings and documentary screenings with invited activists and authors (7th Feb 2014) and A Stroll in the Abyss: The Life and Work of Roberto Bolaño (Making sense of the still unsolved killings of women in Ciudad Juárez ), Cork City Library (24th April 2014).

Re-thinking Juan Rulfo's Creative World

I am also co-editing a collection of essays on Juan Rulfo entitled, Re-thinking Juan Rulfo's Creative World: Photography, Prose, Film (Oxford: Legenda 2015) with Dylan Brennan. This collection gathers essays from established and emerging Rulfian scholars and counts among its aims the dissemination of work by Mexican scholars in translation.

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