Dr. 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 explores how global forces shape local cultural and linguistic realities, with a particular interest in how individuals construct identity across both digital and physical environments. She works extensively with cultural materials that emerge from the margins, focusing on underrepresented narratives within Latin American literature and digital culture.

Professor Raynor’s 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.

Professor Raynor is currently engaged in a research program that examines how contemporary Latin American cultural production responds to health and environmental crises. One strand of this work, Pandemic Imaginaries, investigates how writers, filmmakers, poets, and digital creators represent public health emergencies—tracing how these narratives link present-day contagion to historical legacies of disease and ecological disruption. A second strand focuses on waste cultures in Panama and Mexico, exploring how narratives of garbage, recycling, and environmental degradation reflect broader questions of labor, socio-economic precarity, and ecological justice. Together, these projects bring cultural analysis into conversation with environmental and medical humanities, emphasizing how crisis is mediated, materialized, and imagined across diverse media forms.