Roberto Esposto

Dr Roberto H. Esposto is a Senior Lecturer in the Spanish and Latin American Studies program in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland.

Roberto’s research output focuses on Argentinean and Latin American literature. His work also centres on Latin American thought, with a particular attention to decolonial thinking. His research publications deal with questions of Argentinean and Latin American cultural identity and intellectual history and problematizes the ways in which Latin American intellectuals grapple, from a situated perspective, with a colonial legacy that underpins Western modernity today.

Due to Roberto’s significant contribution to the study of 20th century Argentinean literature, in 2015 he was nominated Corresponding Fellow of the Argentinean Academy of Letters. Roberto is the first Australian Hispanist to be awarded such an honour by an academy of the Spanish language, of which there are twenty-four around the world.

He is an internationally recognized expert on the Argentine novelist and diplomat Abel Posse (1934-2023). Roberto has also published on the -Argentine philosopher Günther Rodolfo Kusch (1922-1979). Kusch is a philosophical anthropologist who made a significant contribution to the articulation of Argentinean and Latin American philosophy, harnessed from indigenous and popular thinking, which has influenced a broad set of disciplines, including metaphysics and theology, art and literary studies, and decolonial thought.

More recently Roberto has contributed to make better known the poetry of the Argentinean Hugo Caamaño (1923-2015), by leading an edited publication in collaboration with numbered members of the academy and published by the Argentinean Academy of Letters, titled Hugo Caamaño, poeta de mundo propio.

Roberto engages regularly with Latin America, by participating in conferences in Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

Since 2003, Roberto has made a significant contribution to fostering the learning and use of Spanish in the international community, by writing the popular, high impact, bestselling Lonely Planet Latin American Spanish Phrasebook and Dictionary, which has seen many editions, including the 10th which appeared in September 2023. This publication has also been translated into French and Italian.

Research interests

• 20th Century Argentinean literature and the historical novel; Latin American literature; Latin American intellectual tradition and decolonial thought