Thenesoya V. Martín De la Nuez (Ph.D., Harvard University) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Iberian and Transoceanic Studies at the University of California, Davis. She specializes in Island Studies, Spanish (Pen)Insular and Transatlantic cultural production, and African and Asian literature in Spanish. With a solid background in Comparative Literature (M.A./B.A. Complutense University, Medal by H.R.H Princess of Spain ) and Hispanic Philology (B.A. University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), 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 of 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.

Over the past five years, 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 18^th Century Spanish-Canarian immigration 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 wide 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 it also grants my ability to develop collaborative projects and extend my work’s impact beyond the research community.

As a FAS Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022), Thenesoya is currently working on the first stage of her research and book project on African and Asian literature 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.

At Harvard University, her dissertation (April 2020), Insular Syntax: Archipelagic Thinking and Relational Literature, was focused on 20^th 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.