Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen is Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza. She graduated in English Philology at the University of Zaragoza in June 2003, and after winning a competitive national scholarship financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (2005), and in 2006 she completed her PhD on the work of Brian McCabe under the supervision of Prof Susana Onega with the dissertation entitled “The Redefinition of Scottish Identity and the Relation Self-Other(s) in the Fiction of Brian McCabe”, and was then awarded with the competitive scholarship Saltire Society for Scottish Studies by the British Arts Council.
She was also founder editor of the Publishing house Jekyll and Jill (2011–2016) and has received several awards such as Premio al Libro Mejor Editado (2011, 2012 and 2015) Gobierno de Aragón, and Premios Cálamo Premio Extraordinario (2014).
Her main research interests include contemporary Scottish fiction, speculative fiction, feminist SF, as well as issues of transmodern identity and narrativity. Among her more recent publications are Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen and José María Yebra-Pertusa (eds), Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literatures in English (Routledge, 2019); the monograph The Redefinition of (Scottish) Identity and the Fiction of Brian McCabe (Peter Lang, 2013); Jessica Aliaga Lavrijsen and Michael Bick (eds), Is This a Culture of Trauma? An Interdisciplinary Approach (Interdisciplinary Press, 2013).
She has also translated several novels, such as: La versión de Nelly, by Eva Figes (Jekyll&Jill, 2013); and El otro McCoy, by Brian McCabe (Jekyll&Jill, 2012).
And has published some articles on Scottish fiction and SF such as: “To Love Beyond Breath, Beyond Reason: A.L. Kennedy’s So I Am Glad”. Papers on Language and Literature. 55.2, (Spring 2019): 125–141; “Scottish Polysyzygiacal Identity and Brian McCabe's Short Fiction”. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Literary and Cultural Studies (SJLCS), Vol. 1. 2019: 34–49; “Transmodern Reconfigurations of Territoriality, Defense, and Cultural Awareness in Ken MacLeod’s Cosmonaut Keep”. Societies 2018, 8, 103; as well as book chapters: “Greenock-Outer Space: Place and Space in Ken MacLeod’s The Human Front and Descent”. In Monika Szuba y Julian Wolfrey (eds). The Poetics of Space and Place in Scottish Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019); “Bridging Linguistic Barriers in Contemporary Scottish-Spanish Literary Translation: Banks, Kelman, McCabe and Welsh”. In Aniela Korzeniowska and Izabella Szymanska (eds). Imaging Scottishness: European and Domestic Representations (Semper Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 2017); and “Trauma Studies and Alien Abductions: Whitley Strieber's Communion”. In Pasqual Bernat et al. (eds) Ciència i Ficció. L'exploració creativa dels mons reals i dels irreals (Talaoits, 2015), pp. 15–24.
She has also co-organised several International seminars at the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), such as “Celtic Fictions-Scottish and Irish Speculative Fiction” (Galway 2016) and “F(r)ictions of truth and justice: reframing terrorism in literary texts and Films” (Kosiçe 2014), as well as the International conference “Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literatures in English” (Zaragoza 2017).
Some of her forthcoming publications include: “A Transmodern Approach to Biology in Naomi Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman”. In Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Gantea (eds). Transcending the Postmodern: Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2020); and “Naomi Mitchison’s Solution Three or the Fear for Cultural and Biological Difference”. In Sabrina Juillet, Pierre Fournier and Celine Planchou (eds), Series Caledonia (Presses Universitaires de Franche Compté, 2020).