Staff profile

Current Research

I am a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures (MLAC), specializing in Hispanic Island Visual Cultures. My research interests encompass the history of Hispanic Art and Visual Cultures, as well as the exploration of notions of space, place, race, and gender within Medieval & Early Modern and Contemporary insular contexts.

My research is fully funded by the Wolfson Foundation’s Scholarship in the Arts and Humanities, and I was also awarded a St Cuthbert’s Society’s Postgraduate Bursary. My thesis, supervised by Dr. Francisco-J Hernández Adrián, Prof. Rosi Song, and Dr. Manolo Hijano centres on Political Cartoons, Comics, Tebeos, Visual Novels, and Caricature (Visual Print Media) in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. It particularly focuses upon work from the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands, although it also considers production from Ceuta and Melilla, Gibraltar, and the Phillipines.

I am especially interested in avant-garde visual production and fermentations of cultural iconicity in insular spaces. My research considers how such phenomena are culturally mediated through archipelagic thinking. I particularly explore the broader implications of these dynamics within the context of discourses related to transitions and the complex interplay between aesthetico-cultural/aesthetico-political histories across territorial, Iberian, and transnational frames.

I have a background in Modern Languages and Cultures, having worked with Hispanic and Francophone Art, Film, Poetry, and Literature during my BA and MA degrees at Durham University. My Master's thesis critically examined iconic and mythic framings of Canarian artist César Manrique between 1953 and the present, re-evaluating his cultural iconicity and arguing that the functions and origins of his iconic status ought to be considered in relation to mediations between territorial, national, and transnational frames. My undergraduate dissertation analysed satirical discourses surrounding the 2017 Spanish Constitutional Crisis and Catalan Independence Referendum in the work of Canarian graphic humourist José Luis Padilla ‘Padylla’ Morilla, considering his engagements with discourses of peripherality and marginality whilst using his work to interrogate the applicability of humour theory frameworks in contemporary Spanish political satire.

Research Projects & Memberships

• I am a member of the Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art, through which I have acted as a Research Associate on the Spanish Art in County Durham Impact Project.

• I have previously sat on the Steering Group and Coordinating Committee for the Centre for Visual Arts and Cultures (CVAC) at Durham, in which I have been involved in the organisation of the annual Visual Intersections VI and VII Summer School. 

• I am also a member of the Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas and associate of the ARTES – Iberian & Latin American Visual Culture Group.

Speaking Arrangements and Upcoming Publications

• Archipelagic Thinking
• Hispanic Studies
• Island Studies
• Visual Cultures