Anna Cruzado Sanders

Thesis Title: Exploring crime fiction translation from a gender and minority culture perspective

Bio: Anna has long been interested in Latin America, translation, crime fiction, and gender, with those interests leading her to pursue this PhD. Anna has over 10 years of Spanish teaching experience across primary, secondary and tertiary education, and she has real passion for languages as she considers them the gateway to other cultures and societies.

Clare Geraghty

Thesis Title: Queer bodily realities in the feminist hip hop of ‘intersectional beings’, Krudxs Cubensi

Bio: Clare Geraghty is a PhD candidate and tutor in the department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at University College Cork, funded by the National University of Ireland Travelling Doctoral Studentship award. Her research interests lie at the intersection of queer and feminist theory with Latin American cultural studies. Her current research focuses on issues of inclusion within and among feminisms in the context of queer Cuban feminist hip-hop. She is the author of ‘Topless in La Habana: Space, Pleasure, and Visibility in Ethically Representing Gender-Based Violence’ in Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives, eds Sinalo and Mandolini (2023). She is also a queer educator, activist, and enthusiastic home cook.

Eileen O'Connor

Thesis Title: A Translation of the Collected Works of Blanca Varela and Critical Introduction

Bio: Eileen O’Connor is Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, where she is researching and translating the collected works of the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela. Her translations from the Spanish include the poem collection Pez/Fish by Mariela Dreyfus (Perú) and the novel I Lived on Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosín (Chile/USA). Her translation of the poem collection Harbors of Light, also by Marjorie Agosín, was listed among the “75 Notable Translations of 2016” by World Literature Today. Her translations of Latin American poetry also have appeared in Asymmetries: Anthology of Peruvian Poetry (edited by G. Huapaya and Paul Guillén), Mandorla: New Writing from Latin America, Revista Temporales, Washington Square Review, Still Magazine, and New Poetry in Translation. Since 2016, she has translated interviews for “The City and the Writer” series at Words Without Borders, curated by poet Nathalie Handal. Before coming to UCC, Eileen taught Spanish, translation and writing at Harvard University, Wellesley College and Lesley University in the United States for a total of ten years. In 2022, she was awarded a Certificate of Teaching Excellence for her contribution to undergraduate teaching in the Harvard College Writing Program. She also writes fiction and nonfiction.

Elizabeth Rosalez Martínez

Thesis Title: Towards an activist translation. Translating testimonies of those searching for victims of enforced disappearance in Mexico

Bio: Elizabeth Rosales Martínez is a PhD researcher in Translation and Latin American Studies at University College Cork. She is currently an awardee of the Irish Research Council Scholarship under the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship in Conflict Resolution. Her current research entails the translation of stories of people looking for victims of enforced disappearances in Mexico. She is a co-researcher in the project Trans/Actions: Translation as Activism.  Her research interests include collaborative methods of translation, queer pedagogies, and creative practices of translation. Elizabeth is also an art practitioner, specialised in graphic and pictorial media, and installation art. In her artwork she explores the topics of gender, violence, and language.     

Edyta Andzel-O'Shanahan

Thesis Title: Monstrosity, biopower, resistance and selfhood in contemporary Mexican speculative fiction

Bio: Edyta holds a Master’s degree in Spanish Philology from the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, with a major in literary studies. Prior to undertaking her PhD in Hispanic Studies at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at UCC, Edyta had conducted independent research in the field of Mexican and Guatemalan literature, with a particular focus on myth criticism. Edyta has authored several peer-reviewed articles in European literary and cultural journals, including Mitologías Hoy (UAB), Kamchatka (UV) and Amaltea (UCM/The International Association of Myth Criticism). Edyta is currently working on her PhD project investigating monsters in their many guises as a key to the interpretation of literary texts in the context of systems of domination and control, bioresistance and the notion of self. Her research interests include literary and cultural studies, critical theory, and contemporary Mexican fiction.   

Louisa Esther

Thesis Title: Towards a conceptualisation of exile journalism: A study of changing journalistic norms and practices in exile from Latin America and East Africa

Bio: Louisa Esther is a PhD candidate in UCC's French and SPLAS Departments. As an activist-researcher, she works with exiled journalists from East Africa and Latin America in order to understand and conceptualise contemporary exile journalism, an increasing phenomenon in times of globally deteriorating press freedom. Her further academic research interests include conflict reporting, decolonial (media) theory and methods, and genocide denial. Louisa holds two Bachelor's degrees from Leipzig University in Political Science and African Studies and a Joint Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in International Journalism, where she specialised in Conflict and War Reporting at Swansea University. She is a fellow of the German Episcopalian Academic Foundation, an advisory board member of the Mundus Journalism programme, and an editor at UCC's postgraduate journal The Boolean. Louisa has previously worked as a researcher, freelance journalist, and campaigns manager in Africa's Great Lakes Region and across Europe. She has published articles and podcasts on a range of issues, including local politics, forgotten humanitarian crises, and journalism in times of war, and is an experienced campaigns manager. Recently, she founded an organisation for the support of exiled journalists. You can find more info on louisaesther.com 

Lucy Dubert

Thesis Title: Cuban Art’s Body Politics: Bodies, Spaces and Places

Bio: Lucy Dubert started her UCC academic education in the Autumn of 2014 when she commenced the Diploma in European Art History run by the Adult Continuing Education Department and directed by Dr. James Cronin. She completed the Diploma in Spring 2016 and began an undergraduate BA in Arts Degree, as a mature student, that same year. She graduated in 2019 with a major in Art History, a minor in Philosophy and extra credits in Latin and Ancient Greek. In the Autumn of 2019 she began the Masters Degree in Global Gallery Studies directed by Dr. Mary Kelly of the Art History Department. Lucy went on, along with her fellow classmates, to complete this masters in lockdown and completed a 15,000 word dissertation specialising in the Second Havana Biennial supervised by Dr. Carlos Garrido Castellano 'How the Havana Biennials of the 1980’s Exemplified the ‘Postcolonial Turn’ and Became the Blueprint for Prospective Exhibitions of the Future.'. In September of 2020 she began a second masters, this time a Master's in Philosophy, where she completed a 15,000 word dissertation supervised by Dr. Adam Loughnane and titled 'Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty - How a Rejection of Empiricism and Intellectualism Leads to the Dissolution of Subject-Object Hierarchy and the Creation of Gestaltism According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty.' As of July 2023, Lucy has been accepted onto the PhD programme in the SPLAS department. She is supervised by Dr. Carlos Garrido-Castellano and she will specialise in the Art History of Cuba.

Mireia Gomez i Martínez

Thesis Title: Linguistic Hospitality in Contexts of Complex Linguistic Diversity: Exploring the Catalan “Aula d’Acollida” from a Comparative Perspective

Bio: Mireia's main areas of research are sociolinguistics, language planning and policy, and minority languages. She is currently working on school language planning in terms of inclusion and multilingualism, with a comparative focus on the role of minoritized languages in language hospitality programmes in contexts of complex linguistic diversity. Thus, her main objective is to describe and evaluate the practices applied in the school systems of Catalonia and Ireland in relation to linguistic hospitality, taking these as case studies.

Roksana Niewadzisz

Thesis Title: Post Human embodiment of zoomorphic folk tales: power and transformation beyond ‘lethal binaries’

Bio: Roksana Niewadzisz is a polylingual artist and a researcher with an academic background in Theatre, Translations and Art History. Currently she is developing a multidisciplinary practice-based PhD project across the Department of Theatre and the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University College Cork for which she was awarded the 2021 Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. For the last five years Roksana has developed a variety of multidisciplinary, multilinguistic performative and audio-visual projects presented during international conferences, symposiums and events, such as: IFTR Shifting Places, ‘Out of Wings Forum’ at King’s College in London, ‘Fabulation for Future’ and ‘How to become a Posthuman’ at the Film University Babelsberg, ‘Performing Translation’, ‘Reading in Translation’ and ‘Radical Translation(s)/Translating the Radical’ at the UCC, 68^th Annual AHGBI Conference at the UDC/Trinity in Dublin, ‘Global Water Dances Cork’ and the ‘Refugee Week’ at the UCC. She also contributed with her reflective text to the publication: The Coastal Atlas of Ireland (2021). For over eighteen years she has been developing her skills as audio-visual artist, performer, stage director and actress training, devising work and performing in several countries and has developed fluency in four languages: Polish, English, Spanish, and Italian.

Sara Helin-Long

Thesis Title: A Bodily Approach to Memory in the Anthropocene: An Analysis of Patricio Guzmán's Triptych (2010-2020)

Bio: Sara is a PhD candidate in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies Department at the University College Cork. She completed a Master’s in Heritage and Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on three documentary films by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzman. She explores the convergence of Memory Studies, the Anthropocene, and post-dictatorship memory in Chile in Nostalgia for the Light (2010), The Pearl Button (2015), and The Cordillera of Dreams (2020).