My research explores ideas about race, cultural lineage, and national identity in the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. I am interested in particular in how these ideas are shaped by colonisation, decolonisation, and migration, how they intersect with theories and ideologies that circulated more widely across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and how they are expressed in media and visual cultures (including architecture) and literature.  I am very interested in bringing together research and activism and welcome inquiries from potential research students across these fields who combine activism and public engagement with their academic research. 

My first book, Spanish National Identity, Colonial Power, and the Portrayal of Muslims and Jews during the Rif War (1909-27)  explored how representations of Moroccan Muslims and Jews in novels, non-fiction accounts, and photography of colonial Morocco fundamental shaped ideas about Spanish national identity in the early twentieth century. It was awarded a publication prize by the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI) in 2018. I am now working on a second book project (under contract with Vanderbilt UP) that explores how the idea of a ‘Hispanic world’ or race’ as its proponents referred to it, is commemorated in monumental texts and objects across the Iberian Atlantic between 1874- 1947. The project is underpinned by the broader question of what monuments can tell us about a society’s ideas about race.

My other published works explore topics such as representations of the Moroccan troops that fought under Franco during the Spanish Civil War, the image of medieval Iberia in the work of twentieth-century Latin American Jewish writers, and contemporary debates around offering Spanish citizenship to the descendants of exiled Iberian Jewish and Islamic populations.  Recently I have started working with secondary school teachers in Spain to develop tools for teaching about Spain’s history of colonial conflict with Morocco.