Gabriel Meza is a Tutor in Spanish and Latin American Studies and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne. His field of study includes interarts studies, intermediality, and intercultural studies. His research has focused on the study of poetry in its connections with popular music and orality, along with the exploration of the relationship between poetry and Indigenous orality, particularly within Mapuche culture. He has published numerous research articles in academic journals and has presented his work at international conferences. He has also served as a guest editor and peer reviewer for academic journals in the fields of poetry, music, and cultural studies.

A highlight of his academic career is his doctoral research (Universidad de Concepción, Chile, 2016), which examined the relationships and displacements between literature and music in the context of postmodernism by analyzing the work of Latin American writers and musicians: Mário de Andrade in Brazil, and Julio Cortázar, Pedro Aznar, and Luis Alberto Spinetta in Argentina.

His academic output also includes two postdoctoral projects funded by external grants. The first is titled “The Musicalisation of Poetic Texts and Its Contribution to Literary Studies in Chile” (Fondecyt Chile, 2019–2022). Developed in Chile, this project addressed issues centered on the notions of literary canon and counter-canon, poetry and popular music, and the musicalisation of poetry by Chilean authors such as Pablo Neruda, Raúl Zurita, and Elicura Chihuailaf.

His second postdoctoral project, currently in progress at the University of Melbourne, is titled “Oraliture, Oralisation, and Musicalisation in Contemporary Indigenous Poetry from Chile and Australia” (2024–2026). It explores contemporary Indigenous poetry by Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf and Indigenous Australian poet Ali Cobby Eckermann. This project emphasizes intercultural relations between Indigenous and Western traditions through poetry and highlights the shared elements of Indigenous traditions in both countries concerning orality, the poetic and the musical as expressions of cultural identity.

Within his recent academic activities is the editing of the book Son hermosos ruidos: Estudios literarios sobre el rock chileno (1990–2005) (Ediciones UCSC, Chile, 2026), which brings together scholars from various countries and universities, including the University of Melbourne, University of California Davis, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Chile, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, among others. This book is a pioneer in the collective academic study of Chilean rock of the 1990s from the perspective of literary and cultural studies.

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Gabriel Meza Alegria

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