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 across Latin America and the Global South.

Her current book project, AI Beyond English: Language, Sovereignty, and New Geographies of Intelligence, investigates the emergence of regional and multilingual language models outside the traditional Anglophone technosphere. The project asks how communities are creating AI systems that respond to their own languages, histories, and cultural priorities—and how these models are establishing new geographies of technological relevance and influence. Examining translation technologies, data sovereignty, Indigenous and underrepresented languages, and the material infrastructures of AI, including data centers in Panama and Brazil, Raynor approaches language models not simply as technical tools but as cultural infrastructures that shape which languages, histories, and forms of knowledge become visible and consequential.

This research builds on 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. Across these projects, she explores how technological and environmental transformations generate new cultural worlds—and how communities negotiate, contest, and reimagine their place within them.