I was born in Caracas, Venezuela,  the granddaughter of Spanish exiles and daughter of immigrants. I was raised in Spain since I was six. I moved to California to do my PhD.and I have lived in the United States since then. 

From 2013-15 I lived in Barcelona, where I was the resident director of the University of Illinois-University of California Education Abroad Program. 

The focus of my current research and teaching  is the cultural construction of Spanish national identity in the democratic period. I have two other lines of research underway: one analyzes the state of Hispanism and explores alternative ways to conceptualize the discipline --including, but not limited to, transnational and/or Iberian Studies approaches. I have a contract with Polity Press (UK) for a Cultural History of Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature, co-authored with Jo Labanyi (NYU). The book will also have the collaboration of experts in Catalan, Basque and Galician literatures.

My other area of research now is the study of emotions and affects in the public sphere, and the relationship between politics and collective emotions. Part of that research is included in the co-edited volume (with Pura Fernandez and Jo Labanyi) Engaging the Emotions in Spanish Culture and History (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016). An updated version appeared in Spanish in 2018 (Las emociones en la cultura y la cultura de las emociones, Catedra). Along those lines, I am now working on how emotional and political attachments intersect and function in narratives of citizenship at moments of crisis: the movement of the Outraged in Spain (2011- 2015), the independence referenda in Scotland and Catalonia (2014, 2017);the peace agreement referendum in Colombia (2016); and the internationalfeminist demonstrations against inequality and abuse (2017- present).

Last, but certainly not least, I am interested in the connections between academic research and public life, as well as in the debates and practices that define democratic citizenship.