Belén Melena is a Ph.D. student in Spanish at the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Born and raised in Quito, Ecuador, she holds a B.A. in Communication and Literature from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Boston College, and an M.A. in Humanities from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Latin American literature, particularly Gothic fiction written by women. She examines how representations of monstrosity function as aesthetic and political strategies that contest dominant regimes of power, with special attention to the relationship between literature and territory. Her work explores how space and landscape become sites of resistance, memory, and identity formation. Her interdisciplinary interests include comparative literature, ecocriticism, migration, posthumanism, film studies, and literary translation.