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Turning Questions Into Knowledge, Creativity, and Change
The best research begins with curiosity. At Trinity, faculty transform that curiosity into scholarship, creative expression, and real-world impact. Across disciplines, our faculty investigate complex challenges, produce original works, and contribute insights that influence communities, industries, and global conversations.
Students are invited into that process from the start.
Featured Research
For centuries, literature scholars have studied how writers use language, metaphor, narrative, and cultural context to make meaning. Taylor Swift’s songwriting offers a contemporary example of those same traditions at work—making her work a valuable text for literary analysis.
Recent Discoveries
Two faculty members received two important grants to conduct research that will culminate in new book publications.
Monica Ocasio Vega, Ph.D.
Spanish, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Ocasio Vega received the 2026 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty grant from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. During the time of this grant, Ocasio Vega will work on her book project, Cooking Sabor: Culinary Imaginaries in the Caribbean.
Kathryn Vomero Santos, Ph.D.
English Department
Vomero Santos was named a 2026-2027 National Humanities Center Fellow, joining 29 scholars in a highly competitive opportunity. She will advance the work of her new manuscript Mischiefs Manifold: A Cultural History of Sycorax, focused on an absent female character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Student Research Spotlight
During the 2024 and 2025, Marina Oquendo ‘26 worked in the Conmemorando a la comunidad: Latinx Experiences at Trinity University. As a SURF research fellow, first through the URAH program and later as a McNair student, Marina highlighted the work of Latino Trinity alumni artists through a digital space, interviewed them for the project’s oral history, and curated an art exhibit for the 2025 Latino Heritage Month titled Creating Our Own Spaces/Creando nuestros espacios. She was mentored by the University Archivist, Abra Schnur, Dr. Dania Abreu-Torres, and the Neidorff Art Gallery curator Lisa Endresen.