DrRodrigo López Martínez

I joined UCD as an Assistant Professor / Lecturer in Hispanic Studies in 2026. I previously studied Literature, with a focus on Literary Theory, at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), received a PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies from the University of Manchester (UK), and worked at Maynooth University (Ireland) and the University of Aberdeen (UK).

Broadly speaking, I research 20th- and 21st-century Latin American culture. I am particularly interested in the intersection of experimental literature and cinema with contemporary debates in critical theory, including psychoanalysis, biopolitics, posthegemony, and infrapolitics.

My first book, The Avant-Garde after Bolaño: Literature and Affects in Latin America, was published by Liverpool University Press. It examines how the iconic Chilean author Roberto Bolaño has redefined the notion of the avant-garde in Latin American literature and influenced a new generation of authors who rose to the international scene in the 21st century.

I am currently writing a second book, Alberto Cardín: The Dissident Intellectual in post-Franco Spain, that is under contract with the University of Wales Press. It studies how the long-forgotten author Alberto Cardín produced an iconoclastic oeuvre that challenged the cultural and political limits of the Spanish democratic transition during the 1970s and 1980s.

I am an Associate Editor for the Bulletin of Spanish Studies and the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.

In addition to academic work, among other contributions to the literary world, I am a member of the judging panel for the 2027 Dublin Literary Award, and I publish short articles about contemporary Latin American literature on my blog: Bolañistas.com