Rate My Professor Moira Fortin Cornejo

Dr. Moira Fortin Cornejo is a Pūkenga (Lecturer) in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, specializing in Spanish and Global Studies. Her academic background is grounded in performing arts, beginning with attendance at a bilingual German-Spanish school in Chile, where she engaged with language through staging German poems, plays, and her own literary creations. She earned a BA with Honours in Theatre Studies from the Universidad Católica de Chile in 2003. During an undergraduate exchange programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand, she tutored for the Spanish Programme at the University of Otago. She completed an MA in Pacific Island Studies at the University of Otago in 2010, after which she moved to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to develop theatre workshops facilitating high-school students' learning of the Rapanui language, resulting in a student-devised and performed play in the indigenous language in 2011. Fortin Cornejo obtained her PhD in Theatre Studies from Victoria University of Wellington in 2016. Her trilingual doctoral thesis, entitled 'Tensions and Possibilities: The Interplay of "Traditional" Cultural Elements and the Creation of "Contemporary" Māori, Samoan diasporic and Rapanui Theatre [He Moto, He Koa: Te Hakapiri o te Haka Ara e te Api ki te Aŋa o te A'amu Api ki Māori, Sāmoa e ko Rapa Nui; Tensiones y Posibilidades: La Integración de Elementos Culturales "Tradicionales" en la Creación "Contemporánea" de Teatro Māori, diáspórico Samoano y Rapanui],' acknowledges diverse cultural sensibilities and engages multilingual audiences.

Prior to her current appointment, she tutored in the Theatre programme at Victoria University of Wellington in 2013 and at Massey University's Creative Arts School in 2015, teaching papers such as Cultural Encounters and Creative Communication. Throughout her acting career, she has been involved in theatre productions in German, Spanish, Rapanui, or English. Her recent interests focus on multilingual theatre, including a bilingual solo performance of Julio Cortázar's *La Autopista del Sur* in 2017 and ongoing work on Baldomero Lillo's *Sub-Terra*. Research specializations encompass theatre as a tool to learn another language, Latin-American theatre, intercultural communication, creative communication, bilingual theatre, interdisciplinary storytelling, and Hispano-American cultural studies. Key publications include the monograph *Rapa Nui Theatre: Staging Indigenous Identities in Easter Island* (Routledge, 2022), 'Researching the performative interface in Rapa Nui: Bridging Indigenous knowledges, colonial histories and contemporary performances' (*Frontiers in Research Metrics & Analytics*, 2025), and co-authored introductions in *Ethnographic Edge* (2025).