José Brownrigg-Gleeson Martínez

About

Profesor Ayudante Doctor Área de Historia Contemporánea & Grupo de Investigación Historia y Cultura Contemporánea de Europa del Sur y América Latina (HCESAL) Universidad de Cantabria (Santander, Spain) I am a historian of Latin America and Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. I hold a PhD in History from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where I was a founding member of Indusal, the university’s research group on Latin American independence. Together with exploring the intellectual and political dimensions of Irish involvement in the revolutionary processes of the Hispanic world, I have published on other aspects of transnational history, such as Irish migration, mobility and multilingualism in Spanish America during the late colonial period, and Hispano-Irish relations. This research has received the generous support of various institutions, such as the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and Harvard University’s International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. Before taking up my current position in Santander, I was an Investigador Distinguido "María Zambrano" at the Universidad de Salamanca (2022–24), an Irish Research Council-Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Galway (2019–22) and the 2017–18 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies (USA). Previously I had worked as an associate lecturer at the University of Winchester (UK) and as a research assistant at the National University of Ireland Galway. I am also active in the field of translation and have translated several books. I am currently working on a monograph which examines the neglected role of Latin America in the development of Irish perceptions of imperialism, decolonization and modernity during the Age of Revolutions (1776–1848). The project looks beyond the scholarship concerning the place of Ireland within the British Empire to analyse the rich body of textual images of Latin America created and circulated amongst Irish communities —both at home and abroad— during the period. The research first charts Irish images of the Iberian New World in the late 18th century. It then traces Irish interpretations of the challenges faced by Latin America during the struggle for independence and the formation of the new nation-states, in the form of civil wars, economic crises and racial tensions. Finally, it studies how these views were assimilated and integrated into discussions about the Irish experience of empire and emigration from the passing of the Act of Union to Young Ireland’s abortive 1848 rebellion. Additionally, the project aspires to encourage discussion on the position of Latin America in the expanding environment of Irish Studies.

Education

Publications