Kelly McDonough

Kelly McDonough is a Tomás Rivera Regents Professor and Graduate Adviser at the University of Texas at Austin, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and specializes in interdisciplinary research bridging Colonial Literary and Cultural Studies, Critical Indigenous Studies, Ethnohistory (Nahuatl Studies), Science and Technology Studies, and Digital Humanities.

• Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Her research focuses on Nahua intellectual production in Mexico over the past 500 years, challenging racialized discourses that exclude Nahuas from intellectual history. Her books The Learned Ones: Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico and Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them (2024) explore Nahua theoretical and practical inquiries into their environments across pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary periods.

McDonough leads collaborative digital humanities projects, including the digitization of the Fondo Real de Cholula judicial archive and the Co-PI role in the Unlocking the Colonial Archive initiative, which harnesses AI for Indigenous and Spanish American historical collections. She teaches courses covering global Indigenous media, critical Indigenous studies, and Nahuatl language.

• Key Research Themes: Indigenous knowledge systems, colonial archives, environmental inquiry, digital humanities methodologies, ethnohistory.