Rachel Robinson

I was appointed Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Galway in 2024. I received my BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in 2012, my MPhil (with distinction) from the University of Oxford in 2015, and my DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2018. After teaching as a lecturer in Spanish at Oxford (2017-2019), I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (2020-2021). In 2022, I took up a position as an Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation (AVH) postdoctoral fellow at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. At the center of my research is Latin American 20th- and 21st-century experimental poetry, as well as its relationship to trends in global avant-garde and conceptual writing.

At the center of my research is Latin American 20th- and 21st-century experimental poetry, as well as its relationship to trends in global avant-garde and conceptual writing. In particular, I analyze the experimental poetry and poetics of the Global South and the Western Hemisphere and their links to other poetries from around the world. I read this poetry within the context of recent theoretical discussions, especially ecocriticism, theories of gender and sexuality, new materialisms, text and image studies and translation theories that question ontological and relational ways of being between languages, cultures, texts, author and reader, and the human and the non-human. The principles inhabiting this poetry cross disciplinary, temporal, lingual, cultural, ontological and even biological boundaries, guiding us to re-evaluate those boundaries themselves. My research to date include works on topics that engage a wide-range of poetic material and literary, cultural and philosophical concepts. My recently published monograph, Visual and Plastic Poetics (Legenda, 2022) illuminates poetic works of three Chilean neo-avant-garde poets, Cecilia Vicuña (1947-), Juan Luis Martínez (1942-1993) and Rodrigo Lira (1949-1981) through the lens of Brazilian concrete poetics (1950s-onward). My participation in the global academic community as well as extra-academic activities demonstrates my commitment to reaching audiences both within and beyond the immediate scope of my research and reinforces the fundamentally international scope and intention of my work. I am currently participating in vibrant networks of Latin American scholars from around the world as well as various interdisciplinary reading groups. I have presented and co-organized a wide range of international conferences, workshops and symposia.

Spanish and Latin American literature; Latin American poetry; 20th- and 21st-century poetry and poetics; Latin American visual culture; Literary theory; Migration poetry; Ecopoetry and poetics; Gender and literature