Dr Lucy O’Sullivan BA, MA, DPhil

Please email me to directly arrange a meeting: l.osullivan@bham.ac.uk

• DPhil, Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
• MA in Hispanic Studies, University College London
• BA in Spanish and Italian, Trinity College Dublin
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

I did my BA in Spanish and Italian at Trinity College Dublin, before going on to complete an MA in Hispanic Studies at University College London and a DPhil in Modern and Medieval Languages at Trinity College,  University of Oxford. Before taking up my post at Birmingham, I held teaching posts at the University of Warwick and the University of Oxford.

I teach optional modules on Spanish Caribbean and Latinx visual and literary culture and on Mexican and Chicanx art. I also supervise final year dissertations on a range of topics relating mostly to Spanish American, Spanish Caribbean and Latinx visual culture (including propaganda, muralism, street art).  

I would be delighted to hear from potential postgraduate students interested in working on the following areas:

Mexican visual culture (including visual and material cultures of Catholicism)
Mexican literature and cultural history
Spanish American and Latinx art (including Spanish Caribbean)
Visual culture and violence
Representations of the body
Visual propaganda and the relationship between art and politics

I welcome comparative projects and research that engages with diverse media.

Find out more - our PhD Hispanic Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My research interests lie primarily in Mexican visual culture. My current book project explores how visual and material culture shaped a period of religious conflict in Mexico spanning from the Catholic-led Cristero War (1926-1929) and the so-called "segunda Cristiada" to the rise of the right-wing Catholic Sinarquista movement in the late 1930s. The project explores how images and objects served to narrativise violence and mobilise actors in this context. I curated a commemorative digital exhibition on the photography of the Cristero War in collaboration with Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación. 

My first book Diego Rivera and Juan Rulfo: Post-revolutionary Body Politics (1922-1965) comparatively examined contrasting representations of the body in the visual and literary works of Diego Rivera and Juan Rulfo to trace evolving intellectual and artistic interpretations of post-revolutionary nationhood in Mexico from the euphoria of the 1920s to the phase of intellectual disenchantment beginning at mid-century. It analyses canonical as well as previously overlooked essays, murals, illustrations, photographs, films and literary texts against a historical backdrop constructed from print media, correspondence and previously unexamined archival materials to provide a multimedia history of Mexico’s shifting post-revolutionary cultural, political and intellectual landscapes during these decades of societal transformation.

Research networks and organisations: Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI), Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS), Association for Latin American Art (ALAA), British Art Network (BAN), UK Latin American Historians Network (UKLAH), Historians of Catholic Mexico (HISTCATMEX), UoB Centre for Material Cultures and Materialities (CMCM).