Doctor Jane Lavery

Research interests

• Mexican Day of the Dead, Covid-19 and diaspora.
• Latin(a) multimedia women writers and artists (i.e writers and artists whose works straddle multiple disciplines (literature, art performance, photography, video, art installation, cyberspace).
• Latin(a) American Women writers and artists
• Latin(o) American Cultural Studies, Visual Arts, Performance Art, Multimedia Studies and Digital Humanities; Feminist theory; Music
• Mexican (Revolutionary) writing, popular culture, cultural Hybridization and Globalization; cultural identity, ideology and gender; The Boom Mexicano Femenino;

Current research

I am the author of two books (2005; 2015) and the co-editor of one book on the Boom Femenino (2010, see research publications), as well as the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles in the area of Mexican women’s literature and Latin American multimedia artists and writers (see publications) and the Mexican Day of the Dead.

Awarded funding (BA small grant) for monograph on Ana Clavel (2015) and funding from various sources (PER Unit, Queen’s University Belfast, Modern Languages and Linguistics at Soton) for multimedia research project with co-researcher Dr Sarah Bowskill (Queen’s University Belfast).
Funding awarded for research project on the Mexican Day of the Dead in Covid Times for impact/outreach activities (Per Unit, Mexican Embassy in the UK, University College Cork and support in kind by docuemntary film makers Tom Price/Stephanie Beeston).

I have published on multimedia works of Latin American artists and writers including a partly funded British Academy monograph on the works of the Mexican multimedia writer Mexican Ana Clavel (Lavery, 2015), which received extensive media coverage (see below); a journal article on the poet and performance artist Regina José Galindo (2012, Lavery and Bowskill) and a journal article on the multimedia artist writer Eli Neira (Bowskill and Lavery, 2020). I am currently involved in a research project with co-researcher Dr Sarah Bowskill (University Queen’s Belfast) on Latin American multimedia women artists and writers (see below of details and podcast) for which we have been awarded funding (see below). The artists and writers whose works were exhibited in a poster exhibition at Winchester School of Arts (University of Southampton) are contributing, with a number of international leading academics on their works, to a volume which is being co-edited by Lavery and Bowskill. We were invited to an “in conversation” event at Kettle’s Yard gallery (Cambridge) with Biennale Award winner Regina José Galindo which was pitched at a broader audience as well as the academic community (http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/conversation-regina-jose-galindo/). Regina José Galindo is collaborating with us in the project.

I am also interested in the reception and consumption of Day of the Dead and Frida Kahlo in the UK from 2015 to present times, and how these phenomena have been reincarnated in the UK in the retail industry, fashion, media, and art amongst other areas. I have an article on the subject published with Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies in April 2021.

This article forms the basis of a larger project examining the intersections of Day of the Dead, Covid-19 and diaspora. I am currently conducting research, in collaboration with Professor Nuala Finnegan (University College Cork), which focuses on the Mexican Day of the Dead and how this ritual is celebrated in the UK by Mexicans in the diaspora (UK and Ireland) and the impact of Covid-19 on this practice. The research will be published in monograph format.
I recently received funding from Southampton University’s PER unit to conduct research related activities including community-engaged art project in Cork and England and to co-produce a short documentary. In collaboration with Finnegan, we will co-produce the short documentary on the impact of Covid-19 on the Day of the Dead and the UK/Cork diaspora (funded by PER unit and University College Cork as well as support in Kind from Price and Beeston). The short will be filmed by award-winning documentary film makers Tom Price (The Times Photographer of the Year 2021; Southampton University alumnus), and Stephanie Beeston winner for the London Emerging Award at Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival 2020 for her documentary Those Who Wait which looks at death rituals in the Philippines.
In collaboration with British Mexican-American artist Emily Wood Ramirez Ahmed, I led a family online workshop on the day of the dead as part of the Southampton’s Art and Humanities Festival on November 16th (https://www.southamptonartshumfest.co.uk/wider-festival/whats-on/?id=9 ). The online workshop focused on the Day of the Dead’s central symbol, the Monarch butterfly to discuss environmental degradation, how Covid has impacted the Day of the Dead practice/communities and ideas of loss and renewal. Children and adults created their own monarch butterflies. This workshop will also be running at schools, Day of the Dead festivals in 2022 with an installation of a giant skull created by Emily Wood surrounded by community-created Monarch butterflies. Forthcoming workshops and launch of documentary will be funded by the Mexican Embassy to the UK. I am also working with Mexicanos en Bournemouth, Bournemouth Fringe Emerging Arts Fringe and Dorset Race and Equality Council by organising community Day of the Dead events in Bournemouth.

Media coverage related to research:
Lavery interviewed on the day at the Boscombe in Bournemouth event by BBC South Today’s broadcast journalist and presenter,
To see the T.V. interview (41 secs) see: https://youtu.be/lTHZR1bRdao
To see the extended, unedited, BBC interview (3.42 min) see: https://youtu.be/bL0PFpzrSjo

Day of the Dead and Virtual Technologies article written by Lavery:
http://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/digital-learning/2021/11/26/dr-jane-lavery-presents-an-immersive-experience-for-day-of-the-dead/
Extensive media coverage including interview on Mexico’s leading media outlet El Universal for my monograph on Ana Clavel.
https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/video/cultura/letras/la-obra-de-ana-clavel-bajo-estudio

Research projects