Research

Research Interests

Atlantic and Archipelagic Studies; (Pen)insular Spanish literature; African and Asian literature in Spanish; Caribbean Literature and "artivism"; Migration-Displacement Studies; Photography/Film Studies; Environmental Humanities; Digital Humanities.

Thenesoya is working on the first stage of her research and book project on African and Asian literature and cultural production in Spanish. Her work aims to intersect traditionally neglected Equatoguinean and Filipino literature and cultural production in Spanish to challenge the symbolic continuation of the Spanish empire.

Her research delves into topics related to islands and archipelagic studies, the rhetoric of imperial insularity in Transatlantic and Pacific territories, displacement, discourses and practices of national and peripheral identity formation, as well as notions of provincialism, belonging, isolation, fluidity, and displacement. Thenesoya's interests comprise photography and film, literary and "artivism" responses in the Anthropocene, digital humanities, and mapping visualizations.

She has been engaged in a cultural and artistic project that parallels her dissertation research: CISLANDERUS. This work, in collaboration with photographer Aníbal Martel, combines ethnographic and migration studies with documentary photography and video to explore 18th-century  Canarian migration to Louisiana and its evolution up to the present day. The project has resulted in a documentary film she has written and produced, Canarians in the United States, and a traveling photographic exhibition both in Spain and the United States—Louisiana State Museum; Cabildo of New Orleans; Spanish Embassy at Washington D.C.; Casa de Colón Museum, Gran Canaria. CISLANDERUS has received comprehensive media coverage (radio, TV, newspapers), and has targeted policymakers and public schools. This background not only places me in the right position to seek future funding but also allows me to develop collaborative projects and extend my work’s impact beyond the research community.

At Harvard University, her dissertation (April 2020),  Insular Syntax: Archipelagic Thinking and Relational Literature, was focused on 20th Century cultural and literary production in three insular and Spanish post-colonial spaces: The Caribbean Islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, the African islands in Equatorial Guinea, and the Canary Islands in Spain. 

Last Publication

Fundación Canaria Tamaimos, 2024. 



Annotated edition of Cuando a Guinea se iba por mar, by Equatoguinean writer Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel. Ediciones Carena, Barcelona (2019).

Get a copy here.

Publications

Echoes of the Past

A cultural and research project that parallels my dissertation, featured at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard.

"That’s when Thenesoya decided to embark on a cultural documentary project, a traveling photographic exhibition and a book focused on the communities of Canary Island descendants in the United States. What started as a project to find what was missing from scholarly accounts of Louisiana culture and connect with the descendants face-to-face, is now documented by an archive of over 100 interviews and more than 8,000 photographs collected during four years of field work and a traveling exhibition." Read it here.

Fellowships and Grants