Cecily Raynor is Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Digital Humanities at McGill University. Her research examines how artificial intelligence and other global technologies are reshaping linguistic diversity, cultural expression, and knowledge production, particularly in Latin America and the Global South.

Her current book project, Multilingual AI in the Global South, investigates the emergence of regional language models and the cultural, political, and environmental questions they raise. The project asks how AI systems developed within predominantly English-language infrastructures represent multilingual communities and what alternative models might resist linguistic and cultural flattening. By examining translation technologies, data sovereignty, Indigenous and underrepresented languages, and the material infrastructures of AI—including data centers in Panama and Brazil—her work approaches language models not simply as technical tools but as cultural infrastructures that determine which languages, histories, and forms of knowledge become visible.

This research builds on Dr. Raynor’s longstanding work in Latin American cultural studies and digital humanities. Her monograph on spatial practices in contemporary Latin America was published by Bucknell University Press in 2021, and her co-edited volume on digital culture in Latin America appeared with the University of Toronto Press in 2023. Her related project, Toxic Futures: Cultures of the Environment in Latin America, examines how literature, film, and digital media represent contamination, extraction, and ecological change. Together, these projects explore how technological and environmental transformations are represented, contested, and reimagined across Latin American cultural contexts.