Fernanda Peñaloza

I joined the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies after eight years living in the UK, where my MA and Phd at the University of Exeter, and then lectured in Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester for four years.

Currently I am coordinating SURCLA (Sydney University Research Community for Latin America), an academic research network that was originally conceived by the Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies (School of Languages and Cultures), but which rapidly gained the support of members of different departments and schools across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

In the last few years, I’ve been working on a study of cultural production of Patagonia in the context of Argentine-Chilean relations. I am exploring the interrelation between discursive operations and cultural production during the period that signals a major shift in the whole history of Chilean and Argentine interstate relations: the 1978 mobilization for war to political rapprochement.

Together with fellow members of SURCLA Dr Vek Lewis and Dr Verónica Quinteros I am working on a FARSS (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Support Scheme) funded research project entitled Latin American Migration in Sydney: The Chilean Case. By combining ethnographic interviewing, document collection, and discourse analysis, this project seeks to uncover the wide range of meanings and uses that processes of identity formation, differentiation, recognition and negotiation play among members of Sydney’s Chilean community.

A third strand of my research is related to geopolitics of knowledge. I am exploring the conceptualisation of indigenenous knowledges in Chile and Argentina.