Contributing
Barbara Burns talks to Aggie Fanning, Co-Editor of the MHRA online journal Working Papers in the Humanities.
BB. The publication in December of Volume 20 of our online PG/early-career journal, Working Papers in the Humanities, marked the completion of your first year as MHRA Postgraduate Editor. Looking back on the last year, what were the key hurdles and rewards, and what do you feel you’ve learned from the process?
AF. Coming into the role as a PhD student, I was used to engaging with academic journals as a reader, so one of the most rewarding aspects of the past year has been getting to know just how much work goes on behind the scenes to make an issue come together. A lot of the learning happened on the job, and co-editing really helped with that. It made the process much less daunting, and it was great to have someone to share decisions and problem-solve with. I also really enjoyed getting to read such a wide range of submissions, often from areas of study quite different from my own.
One of the biggest things I’ve taken away from the experience is just how collaborative journal publishing is. It involves authors, reviewers, production editors, WPH’s editorial board, all working towards the same end. And on a more practical note, I’ve learned that you can check footnotes countless times and still miss a stray bracket, which has only reinforced the value of having more than one pair of eyes on everything!
BB. Your doctoral thesis is a comparative study of the work of two twentieth-century Latin American writers, Salvadora Medina Onrubia from Argentina, and Patrícia Galvão from Brazil. What do these two women have in common, and why are they important?
AF. This project started as my Master’s thesis, and it’s been something I’ve really enjoyed researching ever since. Salvadora Medina Onrubia (1894–1972) and Patrícia Galvão (1910–1962) were both writers whose literary work was deeply intertwined with political activism. Working in different national contexts, Argentina and Brazil, they shared striking similarities: both were journalists, outspoken leftist militants, and cultural figures who operated in male-dominated literary worlds.
What first prompted me to compare them was coming across two autobiographical anecdotes that are uncannily similar. In 1919, during Argentina’s Semana Trágica [Tragic Week, a period of violent clashes between workers and government forces], Onrubia recalls being lifted onto coffins at a workers’ funeral so that she could address the crowd, before police charged and she was pulled into an open grave to escape the violence. Just over a decade later, Galvão describes being dragged forward to speak at a protest against the execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, moments before police opened fire on the crowd. Both women were later imprisoned under authoritarian regimes, in the same year, remarkably, 1931.
Beyond these parallels, what interested me was how both women were central to major cultural moments in their countries, yet were gradually pushed to the margins of literary history. Galvão was deeply involved in Brazilian Modernism alongside figures such as Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade, but her work has only relatively recently been recognised in its own right. Similarly, Onrubia was closely connected to Argentina’s literary scene: the newspaper she was involved with, Crítica, published writers like Roberto Arlt and Jorge Luis Borges, and she was close to Alfonsina Storni. However, her name largely disappeared until very recently.
My project aims to bring these two figures back into view through a comparative lens. For anyone interested, Galvão’s best-known novel, Industrial Park, a powerful proletarian novel that exposes the exploitation of workers in industrial São Paulo based on class, gender, and race, is available in English translation. Onrubia’s work has not yet been translated, but anyone wanting to read some theatre in Spanish should have a look at her play Las descentradas, a proto-feminist melodrama about women who refuse to conform to social expectations.
BB. I understand you had an opportunity to complete a doctoral placement at the Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires. What kind of work did you do there, and how did this expand your horizons?
AF. Yes, in the summer of 2024 I was lucky enough to receive an Open-Oxford-Cambridge DTP Placement Award, and I spent two months at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina working as part of the museum’s Editorial Department.
The Editorial Department is responsible for producing all the museum’s catalogues, and it also produces/edits/proofreads any text required by the institution’s other departments and its website, so as a result my responsibilities were incredibly varied. I spent most of my time collating and cataloguing the Museum’s existing book publications in digital form. Although that sounds potentially tedious, I got to leaf through beautiful books about art, learning how a museum catalogue is produced, the texts that are commissioned, how the artwork is formatted etc. I also got to attend meetings where forthcoming publications were discussed. It was fascinating to see how a physical exhibition is made into a book, the decisions this involves, and the process of it.
As someone who grew up in Argentina, speaking Spanish, it was also a great opportunity to use my languages, whether that be translating a collaborating artist’s WhatsApp voice notes into English, or interacting more formally in an office setting. One of the best parts of working at the Museum was getting early access to exhibitions and private viewings, seeing the storerooms, and understanding how the institution works beyond its public-facing spaces.
BB. You’ve also recently returned from a research trip to Brazil. What did that involve, and why was it important for your studies?
AF. Researching Latin America has meant that travelling there has become an important part of my work, not only in terms of professional opportunities, such as my placement at the Museo Moderno, but also through archival research. Last year, I was fortunate to spend time in both Argentina and Brazil.
In April, I travelled to Buenos Aires and visited the Centre for Documentation and Research on Left-Wing Culture (CeDInCI), as well as the National Library, where I consulted Onrubia’s journalism. Although much of her journalism has thankfully been digitised, I was particularly interested in a series of articles she published in 1947 criticising Argentina’s Foreign Minister. While I had already read Onrubia’s pieces, the archival visit allowed me to uncover the minister’s responses, published in his own newspaper. Being able to read the exchange in full, and to see both sides of the argument laid out in print, was a real highlight.
In November, I travelled to São Paulo and Santos to consult Patrícia Galvão’s original notebooks, where her novel Industrial Park was drafted. This involved navigating a very memorable experience of Latin American bureaucracy: I had to email a colleague at Oxford, who emailed another colleague in the US, who put me in contact with a member of Galvão’s family, who then put me in contact with the intellectual property lawyers, who then put me in contact with the owner of the archive, who eventually let her secretary show me the material. And it was absolutely worth it! Seeing an author’s handwriting, and even the typewriter she used to write a text I’ve been studying since my Master’s degree, made my research feel tangible in a completely new way and underscored why archival work is so important.
BB. As well as working with the MHRA, you’ve served as a graduate representative in your own institution and must have a sense of what the big issues facing doctoral students are today. Is it still the case that financial insecurity, mental health issues around stress and isolation, and managing complex workloads present the greatest challenges, or can you see other factors at work too?
AF. I think financial insecurity, mental health, and the pressure of managing increasingly complex workloads are still very much at the centre of doctoral life. Serving as a graduate representative, particularly for a ‘smaller’ language, has made me much more aware of how unevenly these pressures are experienced across disciplines, especially when resources are stretched and future career prospects can feel quite limited. While institutions like my own, Oxford, are fortunate to have significant investment, such as the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, there’s also a real concern that smaller languages and sub-faculties risk being absorbed or sidelined within larger structures.
At the same time, one of the most encouraging things I’ve seen is how these shared challenges often foster strong communities. On both an institutional and a personal level, doctoral students are very aware that others are dealing with similar pressures, and that awareness can translate into genuine solidarity and mutual support. For me, that sense of community has been one of the most important ways students navigate the difficulties of doctoral study today.
BB. To end on a positive note, what makes you get up in the mornings, and what do you think are the best things about being a postgraduate student in the Humanities?
AF. One of the things that really keeps me going is the variety and sense of possibility that comes with postgraduate life in the Humanities. On any given day, I might be reading something new, travelling for research, working on my own writing, or talking to someone else about theirs; there’s something very motivating about being in touch with people who are genuinely interested in what you’re thinking and working on. I love that no two days look quite the same, and that there’s always the feeling that you’re learning something new, getting better at what you already do, or returning to ideas and texts you care about with fresh perspective.
I’m also continually struck by how generous people are: how often you can email someone who shares your interests, or who’s willing to offer help, or advice. In every context my graduate life has taken me to, the Humanities are taken seriously, and their value is recognised. That sense of purpose – of contributing to a field that really matters – is something I don’t think will ever go away.
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