Irene Villaescusa Illán teaches various BA and MA courses in the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication at the University of Utrecht. She also supervises thesis related to Hispanic studies and Intercultural Communication. Her research interests span from linguistics to literature and culture, including methodologies of content and language integrated learning (CLIL), Hispanic and World literature and film, intercultural communication, globalization studies, travel writing and gender studies. 

She has a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Hong Kong and a Master’s degree on Applied Linguistics to Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language from Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid. She obtained her PhD at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) with a project on Philippine literature in Spanish. She has published a monograph titled Transcultural Nationalism in Hispano Filipino Literature (Palgrave Mcmillan 2020).

Before coming to the Netherlands, she lived in Spain, France and Hong Kong. At the moment she is reading a lot of travel books and playing volleyball.