Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

May 8, 2025

Abigail Arnold | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

During his time in Brandeis University’s English PhD program, Emiliano Gutierrez Popoca, PhD ‘23, took advantage of numerous opportunities to connect with a variety of people and gain professional experience. In addition to his dissertation research, he taught, organized academic events, worked in the library archives, and co-directed the Brandeis Writing Center for two years. “The opportunities for exchange within the program were something I also enjoyed a lot,” said Gutierrez Popoca, who took courses in different subfields and worked alongside faculty and graduate students researching outside his own area of early modernism. “The Brandeis community allowed me to be in touch with people in the sciences and social sciences, which was enriching and widened my perspective on my PhD work.”

Gutierrez Popoca now holds a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgia Tech, where he is primarily focused on teaching and teaches sections of a required writing and communications course for all first-year students. The fellowship also has research and service components, and he has been working on publications both in early modern literary studies, recently publishing an article based on one of his dissertation chapters, and composition and education studies. In addition, he serves on the university’s writing program’s textbook committee and on its multilingual pedagogy and world Englishes committee, which he will co-chair next year.

Many of Gutierrez Popoca’s students at Georgia Tech are majoring in engineering or other STEM fields. “My experience at Brandeis was very useful for teaching STEM students; it helped me think a lot about how to communicate with people in different fields,” he said. He has designed coursework that brings together his own humanities background and STEM interests. “Right now, I am teaching Shakespeare and Data Visualization,” he said. “We talk about Shakespeare but do projects like infographics, websites, and interactive maps that can be applied in other fields. I try to bridge humanities and STEM and show students the relevance of humanities and how communication is relevant in all fields. That’s a way I’ve leveraged my experience with broader audiences.” In addition, his work in the Writing Center and archives has helped him with the service component of his role. “The idea of fostering community within the program and outreach to other units and departments is something I learned at Brandeis,” he said.

In 2022, Gutierrez Popoca won the inaugural Brandeis Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, going on to win the regional competition and then to compete at nationals. Since then, he has found the experience useful in a range of academic projects. “Throughout the job search, 3MT was definitely instrumental. For most interviews, you need to give an elevator pitch of your research, so having that down was very useful,” he said. “I’ve also found it useful in research – the core of my argument in my dissertation became very clear to me after thinking about it for so long and needing to compress it into three minutes, so that helps whenever I’m writing and need to communicate my argument succinctly. My experience with 3MT really improved my ability to articulate my contribution to the field and how I am innovating.” In writing in genres in which succinctness is of the essence, such as book reviews and reference book entries, Gutierrez Popoca has also drawn on his 3MT experience to get across what he needs to say in just a few words.

Gutierrez Popoca advised prospective graduate students to be sure to explore their options during their studies. “It’s easy to feel like you have to focus on a very specific path of your research,” he said, “but the experiences that are often optional are very valuable. Think very intentionally about what experiences you want to have during your PhD program, experiences which might lead you to an alternative path you haven’t contemplated. Sometimes you don’t realize these experiences will be very useful later in your academic or professional career.”