Daniela is a doctoral student in History at the University of Connecticut. Born and raised in southern Spain, she holds graduate degrees in American Literature and American Studies. Her research focuses on gendered mobility, social containment, and cultural memory in 19th and 20th century U.S. history, with particular interest in how transience and deviance were regulated through visual media, material culture, and public discourse. She often centers overlooked or nonconforming figures to explore how identity is shaped in tension with dominant narratives.

Daniela has worked on research projects for non-profits and independent scholars, contributing to work on the Underground Railroad, transnational countercultural movements, and archival storytelling. She is a past Boston Athenæum research fellow, where she conducted research on the cultural construction of the female tramp archetype in the 1890s.

 

Selected Fellowships & Awards:

Boston Athenaeum Research Fellowship, Boston Athenæum, 2024 – 2025

American Studies Book Award for Best Master’s Thesis, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2025

Academic Award, Boston University, 2022 – 2023

Michael D. Wilson Research Fellowship, University of Maine, 2021- 2022

 

Conference Presentations:

“Undressing the Tramp: Reframing Gender, Mobility, and Resistance in 19th-Century America”, Paper to be presented at the New England American Studies Association, “(Re) Framing American Studies: Research, Art, & Praxis. Panel on Women’s History and Public Memory, Colby College, ME, August 4th, 2025.

“David Wants a Stratocaster: Kaliflower, The Intercommunal Newspaper (1969-1972)” Paper presented at the Northeast Popular & American Culture Association Annual Conference, Panel on Gender, Sex, and Sexuality; Communities and Subcultures. Nichols College, MA, October 4th, 2024.

“Between The Glass: Rewriting Elise Cowen” Paper presented at the European Beat Studies Network (EBSN), Panel on Beat Transcendence and Transcendentalism, University of Białystok, Poland, May 15th, 2024.

“The Eclipsed Poet of the Beat Generation: A Literary Spanish Translation” Paper presented at the Wilson Fellowship Symposium, University of Maine, April 16th, 2022.

“Place & Space: On Self-Reliance” Paper and original film presented at the COPLAC Northeast Undergraduate Research Conference, Virtual Conference (Pandemic), October 30th, 2021.

 

Education:

M.A., American Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2025

– Master’s Thesis: “Undressing the Tramp: Nineteenth Century Constructions of the Female Tramp Archetype”

M.A., English & American Literature, Boston University, 2023

B.A., English, and International Studies (double major), and minors in Spanish and Visual Art, University of Maine at Farmington, 2022.

– Undergraduate Thesis: “The Eclipsed Poet of the Beat Generation: A Literary Spanish Translation of Elise Cowen”