Isabel Balseiro es profesora visitante del Departamento de Estudios Ingleses de la UCM, Alexander and Adelaide Hixon Chair in the Humanities y Catedrática de Literatura Comparada en Harvey Mudd College y de Estudios Culturales en la Claremont Graduate University, California. Es licenciada en Filología Rusa y Filología Alemana por Barnard College, Columbia University, y obtuvo su doctorado en Literatura Comparada en New York University. Sus principales líneas de investigación comprenden los Estudios Africanos y de América Latina, el cine del Sur Global, Estudios Poscoloniales, Teoría de la Traducción, Estudios de Género, y Estudios Culturales. En 1996, obtuvo el premio Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves por su labor docente en las Humanidades, que le dio la oportunidad de ser Investigadora Visitante en el Centro de Estudios Africanos de la University of Cape Town (Sudáfrica). Allí llevaría a cabo el trabajo que culminaría en su primer libro, Running Towards Us (Heinemann, 2000)  e inicia un periodo de veinte años investigando en el continente. De esa fértil etapa de trabajo surgen tres nuevos libros: To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa (Wayne State UP, 2003), South Africa: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2009) y The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century (Michigan State UP, 2020). Ha recibido becas de la Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, el American Council of Learned Societies, la Irvine Foundation, la Carnegie Mellon, e HISPANEX, por nombrar algunas.

Desde 2015, se ha centrado en recuperar la obra de María Acuña, poeta extremeña que murió inédita en Centroamérica. Hasta el momento, ha publicado dos recopilaciones de su obra: Poesía descalza (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2020) y Por la vida siento la fuerza (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2021). A raíz de su colaboración con la Biblioteca Nacional de España, el Archivo de la Palabra, Departamento de Música y Audiovisuales, acoge actualmente los manuscritos originales y el registro sonoro de la poeta. Su próximo proyecto es escribir una biografía literaria de María Acuña, recuperando su línea de pensamiento de que el Atlántico traza nexos indelebles entre Europa, África, y las Américas.

En 2022, Balseiro obtuvo una Ayuda María Zambrano para la atracción de talento internacional para continuar sus investigaciones en el Departamento de Estudios Ingleses, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Isabel Balseiro is Visiting Professor in the Department of English Studies at the UCM, Alexander and Adelaide Hixon Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvey Mudd College, and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Claremont Graduate University, California. She specializes in African and Latin American literatures, cinema from the Global South, postcolonial studies, translation theory, gender studies and interdisciplinary approaches to literary culture. She has degrees in Comparative Literature (New York University, 1992) as well as in Russian and German (Barnard College, Columbia University, 1985). Her scholarship delves into the cinema, cultural studies and literature emerging from the political transition from Apartheid to democracy in South Africa. In 1996 she received the Arnold L. Graves and Lois S. Graves Award for “outstanding accomplishments for teaching in the Humanities,” which enabled her to become a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town. She is the editor of Running towards Us: New Writing from South Africa (Heinemann, 2000), which focuses on post-apartheid literary discourse and grapples with the “new” South Africa as reflected in poetry and fiction preoccupied with history, language, and memory. With Ntongela Masilela she co-edited To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa (Wayne State UP, 2003), an inquiry into the history of South African film. And with Tobias Hecht she co-edited South Africa: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2009). In 2020, she published The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century (Michigan State UP). In Poesía descalza (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2020) and Por la vida siento la fuerza (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2021) Balseiro recovers the oeuvre of twentieth-century Spanish poet María Acuña. She is the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, and HISPANEX among others.

Since 2015, she has focused on the work of María Acuña, a poet who died unpublished in El Salvador, and she has edited two of her poetry collections: Poesía descalza and Por la vida siento la fuerza. In collaboration with librarians at Biblioteca Nacional de España, Archivo de la Palabra, Departamento de Música y Audiovisuales, Balseiro has curated and facilitated the acquisition of Acuña’s original unpublished manuscripts and her audio recordings, now available through the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Hispanic Digital Library). Her next project is to write a biography of María Acuña, with the aim of restoring the literary legacy of this transatlantic poet.

In 2022, Balseiro was awarded a María Zambrano fellowship to carry out research at the English Studies Department, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.