Interests:
My work concentrates on the contemporary cultures of the Southern Cone and Latin America in general and aims to apply developments in cultural studies, critical theory and philosophy to the study of cultures and vice versa. I am also interested in the use of new technologies in university teaching.

Biography:
My current major research project is an examination of the Poetics of Exile in the Southern Cone, examining the work of writers such as Alejandra Pizarnik, Osvaldo Lamborghini, Néstor Perlongher, Juan Gelman and more recent writers such as Cristian Aliaga and Washington Cucurto. This project has been undertaken with support for a conference paper and a research visit from the British Academy and for a further research visit from the Society of Authors. The book is due to come out in 2011/12 with University of Wales Press. I also work on translations of poetry and have completed one project on the translation of post-1950 River Plate poets, the fruits of which have been published in the journals Calque, Callaloo and International Poetry Review; I am currently working on poetry from the 2000s, and translations have appeared in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and Janus Head. Alongside Dr Jeremy Munday I have secured funding for a pilot survey for a project to develop a database on the translation of poetry from Spanish to English, entitled Facing Pages. Alongside Dr Cornelia Gräbner of Lancaster University, I coordinate the Poetics of Resistance project, an international network of researchers and cultural producers, which aims to examine the contemporary relationship between political resistance and poetic creation in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world. We have held symposia in Leeds and Santiago de Compostela. The project has been supported by two grants from the University of Leeds, funding from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela and we are currently developing a bid to the AHRC. Two edited collections of essays from members of the group are due out in 2010, one in the journal Cosmos and History, the other as a book with Peter Laing.