How does local cultural production respond to global technological, ecological, and political forces in Latin America? How do large-scale social and environmental transformations—including globalization, environmental change, and technological innovation—shape contemporary forms of storytelling? These are among the central research questions that guide Dr. Cecily Raynor’s scholarly work.

Her research explores the intersections of literature, technology, migration, and environment across contemporary Latin America and the Lusophone world. Drawing on works from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, and beyond, she examines how contemporary narrative forms reshape cultural production, circulation, and interpretation in transnational contexts. Through this work, Dr. Raynor broadens conventional understandings of literature and cultural expression to include digital, multimedia, and transnational forms that reflect the realities of an interconnected, multilingual world.

Raynor’s scholarship emphasizes the material and ethical dimensions of cultural production. She approaches digital infrastructures, media systems, and cultural platforms not as neutral tools, but as sites where questions of access, inequality, labor, and ecological impact intersect. Her work highlights how Latin American cultural production offers a crucial perspective on global debates surrounding technology, environmental vulnerability, and access, particularly in contexts shaped by histories of extraction, migration, and linguistic hybridity.

Her current research includes a new project titled Toxic Futures: Cultures of Contamination in Contemporary Latin America, which examines how literature, film, and digital media represent environmental degradation, structural violence, and uneven exposure to risk. She is also developing a major line of inquiry in a project entitled Multilingual AI in the Global South, which investigates how artificial intelligence and its infrastructures mediate cultural production, translation, and environmental relations. Together, these projects connect environmental humanities, digital humanities, and comparative literary studies to illuminate how contemporary cultural forms responds to technological change and ecological crisis.

Raynor is the author of Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces and co-editor of Digital Encounters: Envisioning Connectivity in Latin American Cultural Production, with her co-edited volume New Forms of Migration in Latin America currently in advanced preparation. Her work has appeared in leading journals and edited collections, including Digital Humanities Quarterly, Journal of Cultural Analytics, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada, and Portuguese Studies Review. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de recherche du Québec, and the Fulbright Program.