I am Lecturer in Latin American and Museum Studies, and co-Course Leader on the MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture and MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture with Professional Experience. Previously, I worked as Senior Teaching Associate in Spanish at Lancaster University, and before joining Westminster I held the post of Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC-funded Standard Grant project Memory, Victims, and Representation of the Colombian Conflict at the University of Liverpool, working with Colombian museums, memory spaces, and NGOs to create participatory arts events and to question museum and heritagisation practices as regards gender representation in light of the country's conflict.
I undertook my undergraduate and MA studies at the University of Glasgow (MA Hons French and Spanish; MLitt European Studies) and obtained my PhD from the University of Liverpool. My thesis explored how long-standing histories of gender violence and social (in)justice in Cuba and Mexico have informed the countries’ detective fiction with a focus on representation of gender and sexuality. During my PhD I held roles as Research Assistant in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, and as Research Associate in the cross-institutional Institute of Cultural Capital (the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University), as well as teaching advanced Spanish on the University of Liverpool's Continuing Education programme.
My research focuses on the processes of symbolic reparations and heritage in Latin America from a gender perspective; narratives of heritage in Colombia and Mexico; ethical approaches to visibilising women's narratives in Mexican and Colombian museums as well as in the Colombian diaspora in the UK; how heritage is constructed contemporarily in a context of violence and trauma in Mexico; necropolitics; narcopolitics, gore capitalism (Valencia, 2010) and the narcopatriarchy in northern Mexico; gender and sexuality in visual and popular cultures; women, beauty, and power in northern Mexican narcoculture; pre-transitional and transitional justice, and participatory action research in cultural institutions from below.
My research primarily focuses on processes of heritage in pre-transitional and transitional contexts in Latin America with a focus on gender, sexuality, and trauma with a specific interest on grassroots activism to realise meaningful, long-term symbolic reparations. My investigations in Colombia led to work with the National Museum of Colombia and the NGOs Corporación Zoscua and La Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres and the development of the hands-on participatory and creative activity Un Museo Para Mí (A Museum for Me) and my studies in Mexico on the banalisation of violence, state terrorism, and impunity have led to fruitful relationships with the Museo Casa de la Memoria Indómita (Museum of Indomitable Memory, Mexico City) and La Casa del Maquío (Maquío's House, Culiacán); I work with both on participatory activities, workshops for younger generations on violence and arts therapy, and developing links with local grassroots organisations for greater exposure.
I am founder and lead of the Red de Investigación de Género, Patrimonio y Memoria (Gender, Heritage and Memory Research Network), where I work with museum practitioners, academics, and students within the fields of visual cultures, museum studies, gender studies, and popular culture studies to analyse and question state-sponsored memorials and their representations of (sexual) violence against women. During my research into heritage, symbolic reparations, necropolitics, transition and memory in Mexico and Colombia, I have also considered the representation of women in arts institutions in the two countries which are affected by feminicide and recent and ongoing violent conflicts and the lack of heritage narratives for women in such spaces. I was awarded a Researcher Development Award by the University of Westminster (2021-2023) to undertake investigations at Mexican museums on the representation of women in cultural institutions across a variety of memory and cultural spaces in the country.
My focus on gender and heritage in Latin America along with my longstanding interest in popular culture's representations of women had led to my ongoing investigations into narcoculture in northern Mexico, in particular Sinaloa, and the aesthetic, lifestyle, and symbolism of the buchona as an symptom of gore capitalism in Culiacán, the Sinaloa state capital.
My monograph, Subverting Sex, Gender, and Genre in Mexican and Cuban Detective Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2024) aims to deepen the understanding of the history of detective fiction in Cuba and Mexico and to provide the reader with new analyses of representations of gender and sexualities.
- Homelands
- Visual Cultures
- Centre for Social Justice Research
- Research Centre on Peripheral Populations
