Lidia Ponce de la Vega

Education

• MA, McGill University (2017)
• Ph.D., McGill University (2022)

Research

Dr. Ponce de la Vega's research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Latin American studies, ecocriticism, and digital humanities, especially regarding the epistemic (de)colonization of Latin American nature and biodiversity in digital archives. She has collaborated with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) performing data collection analyses to identify gaps and biases in BHL’s catalogue. Lidia is currently working on a research project around the decolonization of (online) knowledge about nonhuman species that Latin American countries consider their national symbols. With a focus on materials available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Lidia is collecting, visualizing, and mapping data about these national species to contrast the national value held by biodiversity—as well as the knowledge production about these species available through BHL—with the actual geographical location of nonhuman species beyond national boundaries. Her project thus constitutes a decolonial critique of digital and non-digital epistemic and archival constructions of biodiversity and nation.