I read English language and literature at the University of Vigo (1996–2000, Premio Fin de Carreira). In 2000 I moved to Scotland to complete an MSc in Translation Studies (2000–2001; funded by a Caixa Galicia postgraduate scholarship) and a PhD in Hispanic Studies (2001–2005; funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board) at The University of Edinburgh. Following a semester as Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, I joined Bangor University in January 2005 as Lecturer in Spanish and Director of the Centre for Galician Studies in Wales (2006 to present). I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2013 and to a Full Professorship in 2020. In 2019 I was honoured to be admitted into the Gorsedd Cymru for my contribution to academic and public life in Wales. In 2021 I became an elected Fellow of The Learned Society of Wales.

I am a specialist on the cultures, histories, and politics of the Hispanophone world with parallel expertise in the field of Translation Studies. My work has studied the intellectual histories of nationalisms in Spain; the relationship between culture and the state; and the recent ‘rural turn’ in Spanish culture. My book Galicia, a Sentimental Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics (U of Wales Press, 2013) was translated into Galician as Galiza, um povo sentimental? Género, política e cultura no imaginário nacional galego (2014) and received the 2015 Best Essay Award by the Association of Writers in Galician. I have edited the books Postcolonial Spain: Coloniality, Violence, Independence (U of Wales Press, 2024) and A Companion to Galician Studies (Tamesis, 2014) and special issues for the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies and Translation Studies. My articles have appeared in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Hispanic Research Journal, the International Journal of Iberian Studies, Men and Masculinities, and The Translator. In Wales, I have published articles on Hispanic cultures and politics for the literary magazine O’r Pedwar Gwynt.

My teaching for Bangor University’s BA in Modern Languages includes first-year courses on the Spanish Civil War and the history of Spanish colonialism; Spanish language and translation courses, and environmental approaches to Colombian transitional justice. I am the director of the MA in Translation Studies, where my teaching includes classes on translation and gender, translation and ethics and professional skills in the translation industry. I have supervised 11 PhD theses to completion in all disciplines of my expertise (Galician Studies, Hispanic Studies, and Translation Studies) and very much welcome proposals from prospective candidates in these areas. In 2023 I received a student-led teaching award for innovation in teaching.

Currently, I serve as Co-Lead of REF2029 preparations concerning Modern Languages and Linguistics. I am Research Integrity Lead at the School of Arts, Culture and Language.

I approach the study of present-day politics and cultures in Spain, including the cultures of Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country, as marked by enduring post-imperial tensions. Placing forms of material and symbolic violence at the core of such approach, providing nuanced national contextualisation and interrogating multiculturalist approaches to post-Francoist Spain, my work has provided novel understandings of a range of themes: the historical formation of national identity discourses (Galicia, a Sentimental Nation, 2013), the dynamics of competitive masculinities in nationalisms ("The Imperial within", 2017), or the cultural representation of the legacies of violence in the Basque Country after ETA ("Poetics of Post-ETA Spain", 2017).

My work has interrogated the canon (for example, by offering new ways of reading and teaching Rosalía de Castro, Emilia Pardo Bazán and José Ortega y Gasset) as well as engaging with little-studied contexts and practices (musical satire in Galicia, torture testimonials and ephemeral exhibitions in the Basque Country). Since my doctoral studies, I have remained an active researcher in the field of Translation Studies, with a particular interest in gender and non-state nations. In this area, I have published on the English translations of Catalan writer Mercé Rodoreda’s classic La plaça del Diamant, have translated Galician poet María do Cebreiro into English (I am not from here) and have led a pioneering research project on translation in Wales, culminating in the Special Issue ‘Translation in Wales: History Theory and Approaches’ of the journal Translation Studies.  
Following from the award of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2015–2016), my current research seeks to transform understandings of national conflict in Spain by applying postcolonial theories. In particular, it innovatively engages forms of postcolonial enquiry (independence, perpetrator studies, testimonial life narratives, migrant connectivity practices, post-conflict reconciliation, para-colonial aesthetics, orientalisms) with a critique of imperial reason in late nineteenth-, twentieth-century and contemporary Spain. I am currently preparing two publications as part of this research strand: a monograph, Contested Colonialities in the Long Spanish Twentieth-Century: Empire, Nation, Independence (under contract with Palgrave), which connects the ongoing inflections of Spain’s internal national conflict with the legacies of imperial violence inscribed in Spanish democratic modernity; and an edited volume with selected studies following from the organisation of the international conference ‘Postcolonial Spain? Contexts, Politics and Cultural Practices’ (Bangor, 2017).

I am also currently developing new research on how contemporary Galician culture has registered the disappearance of autochthonous rural life in the last three decades, combining my long-standing interests in postcolonial theory with aspects of ecocriticism, trauma and animal studies. This strand of my current research forms the basis of my graduate seminar ‘Elegies without consolation: poetics of territory and conflict in contemporary Galician Culture’, which I delivered at The Graduate Center of CUNY (2018).

Central to my approach is collaborating regularly with other researchers, cultural practitioners, politicians and social movements. Examples of recent and current collaborations include:

• Organiser and speaker, with Hywel Wiliams (MP, Plaid Cymru, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Catalonia), of the event ‘Understanding independence in contemporary Spain: notes on the Catalan referendum’, Bangor, 27 October 2017.
• Collaboration with Catalan feminist direct action group ‘Gatamaula’ for the publication of multi-authored volume Terra de Ningú: Perspectives feministes sobre la independència (2017).
• Participation in research network ‘Contested Identities: Cultural Dialogues between Small Nations’ (led by Professor Willy Maley, University of Glasgow, funded by The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2015–2017).
• Participation in research network ‘La experiencia de la sociedad moderna en España: Emociones, relaciones de género y subjetividades (siglos XIX y XX)’ (led by Professor Nerea Aresti, University of the Basque Country, funded by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, 2017–2019).
• Participation in research network ‘Unha análise da obra narrativa de Rosalía de Castro: Fundamentos teóricos e metodolóxicos’ (led by Dr María do Cebreiro Rábade Villar, University of Santiago de Compostela, funded by the Xunta de Galicia Government, 2010–2012).

Year 1

• Hispanic Studies component of LXE1600 Transnational Cultures and LXE1700 History in Context

Year 2

• Spanish Language: Grammar Component of LZS2020 and LZS2040.

Year 4

• Adaptations in Hispanic Cinema as part of the module LXI3011 Adaptations in European Cinema
• Spanish Language: Translation and Advanced Grammar component of LZS3020/30/40
• Spanish UG Dissertation Supervisor

MA

• Programme Lead for MA in Translation Studies
• Elements of Academic Writing as part of the module LXM Research Methods

PhD Supervision

My previous PhD students include:

• Tegau Andrews (awarded 2011): ‘Websites and the Translation of Minority Languages: A Case Study in the Welsh Context’
• David Miranda-Barreiro (awarded 2012): ‘Gender, Nation and Otherness in Spanish New York Narratives’. Awarded AHGBI Best Thesis 2012.
• Adam Pearce (awarded 2014): ‘Translating the Welsh Canon: The Translations of Daniel Owen’s Novels into English’
• Maria Cristina Seccia (awarded 2014): ‘Italo-Canadian Writing and Cultural Translation: Translating Caterina Edwards’ The Lion’s Mouth into Italian’
• Jinquan Yu (awarded 2019): ‘Dylan Thomas in Chinese translation: a sociological analysis’
• Lorena López-López (awarded 2019): 'Dialogando coas marxes na narrativa malega de autoría feminina'
• Antigoni Bazani (awarded 2019): 'Translation and L2 Teaching: Tracing an Invisible Relationship in the Monolingual and Post-Monolingual Teaching Context'

I currently supervise or co-supervise the following PhD theses in a variety of disciplines:

• Belén Iglesias-Arbor: ‘Translating the Spanish Best-Seller: María Dueñas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’
• Changjing Liu (as co-supervisor): ‘Chinese avant-garde fiction in translation’
• Yujuan Zhou (as co-supervisor): ‘An analysis of place in David Hawkes’ translations of The Story of the Stone’
• Chunli Shen (as co-supervisor): ‘Translating the novels of Yan Lianke into English’

Position: Professor in Hispanic Studies

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 01248 382041 (2041 internal)

Location: Ystafell/ Room 451

Prif Adeilad y Celfyddydau | Main Arts Building

Prifysgol Bangor | Bangor University

Fford y Coleg, Bangor. LL57 2DG