Ms Mariana Villegas Triay

Language Assistant

Mariana Villegas Triay holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Trinity College Dublin, where she has joined the Hispanic Studies Department as Language Assistant. She was a diplomatic officer for the Mexican Foreign Service between 2015-2022, holding different consular postings at the US-Mexico border where she worked closely with migrants and border communities.

Her approach to language teaching emphasizes communication to learn and practice the target language while using “native” texts such as film, literature, food, music and other cultural “products” to trigger conversation. As a native speaker of Mexican Spanish, she aims to debunk hierarchizations and notions of “correctness” between variants of Spanish. She holds a CELTA since 2014 and has also taught English as a second language to adults.

Her research focuses on contemporary literary and cultural studies with a focus on representations of gender and power dynamics. She is interested in borders, cross-cultural dialogue, literary translation, historical fiction, multilingualism and identity, and gender studies from decolonial and intersectional perspectives.

As part of Dr. Catherine Barbour’s 2022 Irish Research Council New Foundations Award, Mariana was Research Assistant for the project ‘Creating Community: The Role of Creative Practice in Empowering Donegal Women,’ whose aim was to demonstrate the value of creative writing for rural and border communities from an intersectional feminist perspective (https://www.tcd.ie/thebook/events-calendar/events/creating-community-women-responding-to-crisis-through-creative-writing-in-co-donegal.php). Part of her research on the literary representation of witches will appear in the edited volume Women’s Historical Fiction Across the Globe by Catherine Barbour and Karunika Kardak (eds., forthcoming: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031363597). Her early work appeared in the bilingual Literal Magazine – Latin American Voices (https://literalmagazine.com/thoughts-on-american-dirt-by-jeanine-cummins/).

Contact: villegma@tcd.ie