Professor O'Leary has published widely on contemporary Spanish theatre and her works include a monographical study of the theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo (Tamesis, 2005) and articles or chapters on Fernando Arrabal (JILAR, 2008), Antonio Buero Vallejo (Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2011), Carlota O’Neill (Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2012), the Nosotros Theatre Group (MLR, 2017) and Contemporary Theatre Censorship (Palgrave 2024). Other books include A Companion to Carmen Martín Gaite (with Alison Ribeiro de Menezes; Tamesis, 2008; pb 2014), Legacies of War and Dictatorship in Contemporary Spain and Portugal (co-edited with Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Peter Lang, 2011), Global Insights on Theatre Censorship (co-edited with Diego Santos Sánchez and Michael Thompson, Routledge, 2015) and La censura del teatro durante la guerra civil española (Guillermo Escolar, 2020). The latter is one of the outputs of work with the Spanish government-funded research group, Métodos de propaganda activa en la Guerra Civil. Her work on translation includes works on the translations of Irish dramatists Sean O’Casey (Translation Studies, 2018) and Brendan Behan (ALEC, 2023), and French authors Albert Camus (Modern Drama, 2019) and Jean-Paul Sartre (Perspectives, 2020). Her most recent publication is Theatre Censorship in Spain: 1931-1985 (UWP, 2023), co-authored with Michael P. Thompson (Durham) and one of the outputs of an AHRC-funded project on the same topic.

Current research projects include work on Spanish Civil War exiles in Latin America and on the reception of the Spanish Civil War in British and Irish literature. These link her work on the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship to the field of Memory Studies. A new thread of research explores climate fiction and memory studies.

Catherine is the Director of the Cultural Identity and Memory Studies Institute (CIMS), based in the School of Modern Languages. The Institute is a member of the Memory Studies Association and collaborates with partners nationionally and internationally.

Professor O'Leary’s research focuses on four main areas: contemporary Spanish theatre; censorship; gender and identity; and exile and cultural memory. She also has an interest in the politics of translation and in climate fiction. 

Professor O'Leary has taught on several undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Spanish and the School of Modern Languages.

Her Honours options include:

SP3006: Literary Translation (co-taught)

SP3162: Strange Girls and Domestic Angels: Women's Writing in Spain

SP4013: Culture and Conflict: Representing the Spanish Civil War

CO4032: Bad Books

Professor O'Leary studied International Marketing and Languages at Dublin City University before going on to complete a PhD in Spanish literature at University College Dublin. She lectured at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth from 2000 until moving to St Andrews in 2013. Since her arrival at St Andrews, she served as Head of the Department of Spanish (2014-17) and Associate Dean of Arts (2017-18). She is currently Assistant Vice Principal, Dean of Arts and Divinity.

She was a founding member of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) and is currently its co-chair, with Professor Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow). SAHA is a joint initiative of Scottish Higher Education institutions, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. It was established to give a public and collective voice to the Arts and Humanities in the context of Higher Education. 

Theatre; censorship; translation; gender; cultural memory; exile; climate fiction