Dr Peter Haysom-Rodríguez

Profile

I completed a B.A. in Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge (2014), an M.A. in Literary, Cultural and Inter-art Studies at the University of Porto (2016), and a Ph.D. programme in Portuguese & Lusophone Studies at the University of Nottingham (2022). Outside of academia, I worked for three years as an International Business Consultant, at the Portuguese company Market Access: Experts in International Business.

My teaching at Leeds has been multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary, ranging from Portuguese language teaching to the School-widfe “Black Europe” module and various Film Studies topics. I have adopted a teaching-led research approach, alongside a teaching-led research ethos, to ensure maximum symbiosis between scholarship and pedagogy. I teach at all levels, from first-year undergraduate to postgraduate taught programmes.

I have published articles in several international outlets: in the Portugal-based Cadernos de literatura comparada, in the UK-based Portuguese Studies, and in the USA-based Journal of Lusophone Studies and Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies. My first monograph, Regionalisms and Resistance in the Twentieth-Century Portuguese Novel: Spatialized Ideologies was published by Legenda/MHRA in 2024.  

I am a member of the University of Leeds Queer Area Studies Network and the Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa’s Intersexualities Research Group. 

Responsibilities

• LCS Academic Lead for Employability

Research interests

My Ph.D. research (published in my 2024 monograph Regionalisms and Resistance in the Twentieth-Century Portuguese Novel) examined the ideological uses of regional space and regional dynamics in selected novels by Aquilino Ribeiro, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Lídia Jorge and José Saramago. You can read the Times Literary Supplement’s review of my book here, and my recent interview with MHRA about the project is available here.

My other research interests include queer eco-consciousness in Ana Luísa Amaral’s poetry, anti-racist discourse in contemporary Portuguese RAP music, dictatorship-era Portuguese cinema, Brazilian rap music from 1985–present and, more recently, the relationship between cancer and Portuguese poetry. The Medical Humanities field is my current direction of travel: my latest project (“An Aesthetic of Malignancy”) analyses representations of cancer in contemporary Brazilian cinema and twenty-first century Portuguese verse.

Qualifications

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2023)
• PhD in Portuguese & Lusophone Studies (2022)
• MA in Literary, Cultural and Inter-Artistic Studies (2016)
• BA in Modern & Medieval Languages (2014)

Professional memberships

• Association of British & Irish Lusitanists
• American Portuguese Studies Association
• International Lusitanists Association
• Intersexualidades/Intersexualities international research network
• European Popular Musics Group
• LCS Queer Area Studies Network
• University of Leeds Medical Humanities Research Group

Student education

At Leeds, I have taught on the following topics:

• Portuguese language (at various levels)
• Spanish-English specialised translation 
• Portuguese-English specialised translation
• Portuguese and Brazilian literature
• Portuguese, Brazilian and Angolan cinema
• The history of Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa
• Queer resistance in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
• Afro-Iberia (links between Africa and the Iberian Peninsula since the 700s)
• Black Portugal, from 1400-present
• Hidden presences in Black Britain

Research groups and institutes

• Queer Area Studies Network