Prof Nuala Finnegan - Día de Los Muertos 2023

Nuala Finnegan is Professor in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at University College Cork and the Director of the Centre for Mexican Studies. She has published widely in contemporary Mexican cultural studies with a particular focus on gender. Interested in multi-disciplinary collaboration and community engagement in her research, many of her projects have involved exhibition curation and co-ordination including Entre Mundos/Between Worlds: Images from Life between Mexico and Ireland with Cecilia Gámez Campanella and Silvio Severino at Cork City Library (2019), and OUTPOSTS: global borders and national boundaries at the Glucksman Gallery, UCC (2017-2018) with Fiona Kearney and Chris Clarke. Recent publications include the bilingual collection of essays Ireland and Cuba: Entangled Histories/Irlanda y Cuba: Historia entretejidas (2020) with Margaret Brehony, and Cultural Representations of Feminicidio on the U.S.-Mexico Border (2018). The recipient of an OHTLI award by the Mexican Government in 2011, she is leading a project under the HEA, DFHERIS and the Shared Island Fund entitled, Critical Epistemologies across Borders with Professor Fidelma Ashe, at University of Ulster applying Latin American feminist creative epistemologies in conversations around women and identity on the island. Currently writing a book on child-centred cultural practice at the US-Mexico border, she is also collaborating with Jane Lavery (University of Southampton) on a project on death and the pandemic, investigating changing configurations of the Day of the Dead festival among Mexican communities in Ireland, the UK and elsewhere. She is Chair of University College Cork’s Equality Committee.