Girton College
Cambridge
CB3 0JG
United Kingdom
Maria Reyes Baztán is a College Lecturer in Spanish at Girton College.
Before coming to Cambridge, Maria completed her studies in both Spain and the UK. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Universitat de València and spent one year at the University of Leicester. Maria was able to return to her beloved Midlands after she was awarded a scholarship to do a MA at the University of Warwick, where she also stayed to complete her PhD. She then worked as a lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham (2021-22) and at the University of Reading (2022-23), where she was nominated for a teaching award by her students.
Maria has taught Spanish and Latin American culture at different UK institutions. Her research expertise allows her to teach a range of papers in Latin American and peninsular Spanish culture, including SP1, SP4 and SP5.
Maria’s research examines the intersection between nationalism and anticolonialism in the Basque Country and, most recently, Cuba.
Maria is currently writing her first monograph, which is under contract with Liverpool University Press. Based on her doctoral thesis (2022), Maria’s forthcoming book is the first book-length study of the origin and development of anticolonial language and rhetoric within Basque nationalism. The monograph explores the origin and development of anticolonial ideas within the Basque nationalist movement from the 1890s to the 1930s through a close examination of Basque periodicals. It challenges the Eurocentric approaches that have traditionally dominated the study of nationalism and stresses the importance of the transnational ideas which emerged outside Europe for the success and development of the Basque nationalist movement. This research has also resulted in a research article in the Journal of Contemporary History (2023), which analyses Basque anticolonialism during the period of the II Spanish Republic.
After her post at Nottingham in which she taught Cuban culture and after a fruitful and unforgettable experience visiting Eastern Cuba, Maria re-discovered her passion for Cuban history and culture. As result, she is advancing a research project which explores the so-called “Wilsonian moment” and the origins of anticolonial nationalism in Cuba.
Maria is also widely interested in the relationship between food and nation-building, which resulted in a peer-reviewed article on the Spanish omelette published in 2021 (see below). She is currently drafting another article based on this research, which will form part of a multidisciplinary essay collection in the Routledge Companion of Language and Food (forthcoming).
- Reyes Baztán, Maria, ¡Arriba los pueblos oprimidos! Anticolonialism, race and violence in Basque radical nationalism (1892-1936), monograph under contract with Liverpool University Press (forthcoming)
- Reyes Baztán, Maria, ‘Historical perspectives on Food and Nationhood’ in M. Moriarty & G. Mapes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Language and Food (forthcoming).
- Reyes Baztán, Maria, Unpacking western anticolonialism: Jagi-Jagi and the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936), Journal of Contemporary History, 0(0) (2023) https://doi.org/10.1177/00220094231180843
- Reyes Baztán, Maria, review of Tras las huellas del terrorismo en Euskadi: justicia restaurativa, convivencia y reconciliación, by Annabel Martín and Mº Pilar Rodríguez (eds), International Journal of Iberian Studies, 34, 2 (2021), pp. 179-181
- Reyes Baztán, Maria, ‘Potatoes and National Building: the case of the Spanish omelette’, Journal of Latin American and Iberian Studies, 27:2 (2021), pp. 151-170, DOI: 10.1080/14701847.2021.1939529. This article has received media coverage in The Times and The I
- Archilés i Cardona, Ferran & Maria Reyes Baztán, 'El nacionalisme i el conreu de la cultura', translation (from English to Catalan) of Joep Leerssen, 'Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture', in Afers: fulls de recerca i pensament, Vol. 32, Nº 86 (2017)
