Rebecca Jarman

Professor Rebecca Jarman is a leading scholar in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds, where she has been a faculty member since 2015. Her academic journey began at the University of Cambridge, where she earned her PhD, MPhil, and MA, supported by a Mallinson Scholarship. Her interdisciplinary research bridges Latin American culture, history, politics, and environmental disaster studies.

Her research interests span Latin American culture, urban poverty in Venezuela, disaster studies, geological humanities, and the cultural memory of catastrophes. She is particularly known for her work on the intersections of cultural production, memory, and resilience in post-disaster contexts, especially in the Andes. Her current AHRC-funded project, Moving Mountains, explores the afterlives of landslide disasters and how communities live with and represent telluric catastrophes. Her scholarship draws on literature, film, visual culture, and archival materials to examine how social imaginaries are formed in postcolonial and decolonial environments.

The trends in her recent publications reveal a strong focus on the cultural responses to ecological disasters, particularly in Venezuela and Colombia. She analyzes how literature and film negotiate the political and social legacies of events like the Vargas Tragedy and the Armero landslide, often through the lens of childhood, memory, and resistance. Her work also critically engages with cinematic movements such as New Venezuelan Cinema and Golden Age Venezuelan film, exploring how they reflect and challenge national narratives of crisis, revolution, and identity.

• Mallinson Scholarship (University of Cambridge)

Professor Jarman is an active mentor, currently supervising PhD projects on topics such as left populism in Mexico and intergenerational disaster preparedness. She has secured significant research funding from bodies like the AHRC, British Council, and Newton Fund. She is the co-founder of the research network Women Researching Violence, funded by the British Academy, and is deeply involved in public engagement, contributing to BBC, The Conversation, and other media outlets. She also collaborates with theatre professionals and curates film festivals, demonstrating a strong commitment to knowledge exchange beyond academia.

She leads and participates in several research groups, including the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems, and the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies network. Her work on the Godfrey Bingley Archives also connects geology, photography, and institutional history, revealing the entangled epistemologies of scientific and cultural disciplines.