Her first book Transcultural Nationalism in Hispano-Filipino Literature (Palgrave 2020) studies a corpus of literary works written by Filipino authors in Spanish in the first half of the twentieth century from a transnational and transcultural perspective contributing to studies of the Global Hispanophone. She has published journal articles on Philippine literature written in Spanish in the Revista de Crítica Literaria Lationamericana (2018),  UNITAS the bi-annual journal of the University of Santo Tomás in the Philippines (2019) and on feminism and travel writing in Feminismo(s) a peer-reviewed journal from the University of Alicante.

She is co-editor and contributor with a chapter in a volume that considers alternatives views of globalization entitled Other Globes: Past and Peripheral Imaginations of Globalisation, (Palgrave, 2019). She has an interest on studies of the Global Hispanophone world and comparative literatures, globalization studies and travel writing.

Irene is a member of the quality committee of the Digital Humanities Project that focuses on Philippine literature in Spanish DigiPhiLit.