With the recent addition of Senior Lecturer Dr Anne Walsh to the academic team, the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies is one of the fastest growing and dynamic departments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Members of the department have research and teaching interests with particular strengths in contemporary cultural studies that cross disciplinary boundaries and reach into areas such as gender studies, nationalism, migration, film, and literature. The broad area in which research is conducted is the contemporary culture of Spain and Latin America.

One of our most recent developments is the creation of Sydney University Research Community for Latin America (SURCLA), an academic research network that was originally conceived by the department, but which rapidly gained the support of members of different departments and schools across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The main aim of SURCLA is to promote interdisciplinary research and teaching on Latin America as well as establishing the University of Sydney as the leading institution in Australia for the study of Latin America. Students who enrol in our postgraduate programme can benefit from SURCLA as it provides a forum for scholarly communication and interaction, a site of debate where members share their ideas, strategies and research experiences.

A series of research seminars is a regular feature of the department’s unique calendar of activities. Students attend regular research seminars as well as cultural events hosted by the department and SURCLA, and at times jointly organised with other Universities and institutions such as the Sydney Latin American Film Festival.

Specific research projects currently being undertaken by members of the department include the representation of transgender subjectivities in contemporary Latin American literature and film; the city as the prime site of the emergence in Latin America of new subjectivities, in the context of neoliberalism, local and global conflict and contestation; cultural policy and national identity in Catalonia 1980-2003; the work of the author Jesús Moncada; Latin American migrants in Australia, and Argentine-Chilean relations.

PhD supervision is currently available in the following areas:

• 20th and 21st century peninsular Spanish narrative
• 20th and 21st century Catalan narrative
• Cultural and linguistic policy in Spain and its autonomous communities
• Catalan nationalism
• Same-sex desire and transgender in Latin America in literature and film
• Queer and transgender theory
• Post-revolutionary, modern and contemporary Mexico and Cuba
• Debates in Latin American cultural studies
• Revolution and resistance movements in Latin America
• Migration and Latin American identities
• 19th to 20th Century Latin American processes of cultural production, circulation and consumption
• Narrative constructions of models of modernity and identity
• Interrelations between fiction, colonial discourse, travel writing, aesthetics and anthropology
• The Modern & Post Civil-War Spanish Novel
• Narrative in Novel and Film
• The Myth of Don Juan (origins to twentieth century)
• Translation (Spanish-English) - Theory & Practice.


A series of research seminars is a regular feature of the department's activities. This involves contributors from the department, including postgraduate students, as well as outside speakers.