Dr Lourdes Parra Lazcano

Biography

My research has addressed women’s writing, travel writing, animal studies and plant studies in Latin/x America.  My current research examines Mexican herbalists and medicinal plants. 

I studied Communication Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and later at the Universities of Groningen and Goettingen. After this, I completed my PhD in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds. I worked at the University of Leeds before starting at the University of Aberdeen in the autumn of 2018.

Prizes and Awards

Best Undergraduate Lecturer (nominee, 2024/25)

Best Overall Course Award (nominee, 2024/25)

AHGBI-WISPS Dorothy Sherman-Severin Research Fellowship for Early-Career Researchers in Luso-Hispanic Studies (2021).

Research Overview

My research largely focuses on Mexican literature, film and visual culture as well as Latinx narratives. I have examined the role of female travel writers from the 19th century to contemporary times, and I have also studied Latinx written and visual texts using plant studies and diffractive practices.

Current Research

My current research examines Mexican herbalists and medicinal plants.

Past Research

My first book, Escritora, no hay camino: Performatividades transculturales de viajeras mexicanas (2025)  explores Mexican travel literature -from early nineteenth-century publications to the contemporary era- to reveal how the experiences of six women writers reconfigured perceptions of themselves and the foreign.

From a feminist and transcultural critique, this book delves into how Laura Méndez de Cuenca, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, María Luisa Puga, Esther Seligson and Myriam Moscona confront cultural normativity in their narratives, drawing on their cultural interactions in Spain, Germany, Kenya, England, Israel and Bulgaria, among other countries.

The cross-cultural performativities studied here allow us to analyse how the authors incorporate categories such as sex, gender, class, nationality and ethnicity in their works. The comparative chapters explore themes such as transatlantic intellectual exchanges, the border identities' critique of normativity, and the relationship of genealogy to literary and cultural re-appropriations. This book offers an analytical insight into how Mexican women writers have contributed to travel literature by subverting and reconfiguring their identity and relationship to the world.

Knowledge Exchange

Collaborative documentary about Community gardens - Rooted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5a2UphGmpk&list=PLtNdgVpOYExBnsgszbUbSOV0V3uqC6AOk

Collective exhibition - Plant teXts inspired by LatinX American writers https://www.abdn.ac.uk/llmvc/disciplines/spanish/collective-online-exhibition/

Museum exhibition - Day of the Deat Items https://leedsstar.co.uk/tag/lourdes-parra-lazcano/

Published poems -https://archivopdp.unam.mx/?view=article&id=5155

Teaching Responsibilities

Course Coordinator:

SP1039: Spain and Spanish America: History, Culture and Politics

SP2035: Latin America: Text and Context

ME33BS: Spanish for Medical Students

SP1528: Spanish Language 2

SP30YB Key Topics in Spanish and Latin American Culture

Teaching contribution to the following courses:

FS1508 Introduction to Film and the Cinematic Experience

LI5002 Comparative Literary Studies

SX1022 Arts for a More Sustainable Planet

FS4506 Dissertation in Film and Visual Culture

FS1008 Introduction to Visual Culture

FS2007 Visualising Modernity 

FS5022 Research Methods in Film and Visual Culture

SP4039 Dissertation in Spanish

FS1528 Visualising Revolution

SP30AB Residence Abroad Project 

SP4005 Spanish Language 7