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Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership - Student Profiles

 

Biography

I graduated with a First-Class BA (Hons) degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies from University College London, where I was awarded the AA Parker Sessional Prize, the Alcalá Galiano Sessional Prize, and a place on the Dean’s List for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. During my year abroad in Valencia, I worked in several Spanish schools, teaching English and Spanish. After completing my undergraduate degree, I moved to Cambridge to carry out an MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures (passed with Distinction), funded by the Santander Hispanic and Lusophone MPhil Scholarship. My current doctoral research investigates the role of ‘rhetoric’ in the Spanish American epic poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exploring the ways in which colonial epic poets utilised rhetorical devices to actively engage with and contribute to the polemical debates regarding the rights of conquest and the ethics of colonisation that were at the forefront of the early modern period. 

Other academic interests:

Early Modern Spanish Literature

Colonial Literature and Culture

'New World' Historiography

Poetics and Rhetoric in the Renaissance

Department: Spanish and Portuguese
Supervisor: Dr Rodrigo Cacho
College: Clare
AHRC subject area: Spanish Literature
Title of thesis: Rhetorical Visions of Conquest in the Epic Poetry of the New World
 Jessica  Hagley

Affiliations