Dr Lucy Bell

Since completing her PhD in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2013, Lucy Bell has been based at the University of Surrey teaching and researching in Hispanic Studies. Over the last five years, she has developed a strong interest in the use of storytelling, literature, publishing and art practice as modes of resistance and activism in Latin America. Since 2017, she has led the Cartonera Publishing project (2017–present), supported by two large grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This is an ongoing project that brings together editoriales cartoneras (grassroots publishers), writers, artists, film-makers, activists, anthropologists, literary scholars and librarians in diverse forms of creative research. What Lucy has gained from the Cartonera Publishing project is a firm belief that her research as a Latin Americanist should, and must, have a strong activist component, but also a solid methodological base in horizontal collaborations with local cultural actors and artistic practitioners. 

She is currently leading the Prisoner Publishing project, working with Dr Joey Whitfield (Cardiff University, UK) and grassroots literary collectives in Mexico. The aims of the project are: to study and support collectives who use writing in prisons as a tool for resisting against a colonial - sexist, racist and classist - prison system; to design and implement writing programmes in UK prisons inspired by these Latin American collectives; and to create an international network of prison writers, publishers and researchers: the RIELC. 

As part of the UGPN “Women’s (Im)mobilities” project, Lucy is exploring the following questions: How do women move – physically, psychologically, and socially – within the patriarchal, segregated and violent structures of the prison? How does the work of radical feminist, decolonial or anarchist literary collectives enable a different relationship to mobility within and outside prison? And to what extent are women able to create alternative forms of movement within (and after) incarceration/immobilization through acts of writing, creativity and solidarity? She is exploring these questions through action research with the feminist collective Sisters in the Shadows whose founder Elena de Hoyos was the second speaker of our UGPN Public Engagement Seminar Series.