Dr Mary Katherine Newman

Mary Katherine has recently completed her DPhil student at Trinity College, University of Oxford. Her dissertation looked at the understanding and rhetoric of the five senses in the first-hand accounts of the Arauco War (ca. 1546-1645). It shows how soldiers used their bodily experiences, mediated through the senses, to make arguments about the future and nature of the conquest and colonization of Chile.

From 2025-2026 she will be a Quirk Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.

Her postdoctoral project will trace the Mapuche warriors, Caupolicán and Lautaro, from the early modern epic, La Araucana, to modern video games and Indigenous poetry. This project will take the form of a monograph, and consider how we can apply Indigenous literary criticism to the translation and reception of early modern literature.