Gender, Race and Territory

This line of research focuses on gender studies and feminist theory, and their relationship with contemporary debates on territory and critical geography. Likewise, studies are conducted from decolonial methodologies and body-centered methods, in particular participatory methodologies and critical cartography.

Research Projects

Feminist political ecology in the Galapagos Islands: environmental gender violence

Main objective: Consolidate previous research on gender violence and carry it out in the places where different forms of gender violence were identified; these actions will be aligned with other ongoing research.

Harnessing Afro-Ecuadorian Women`s Heritage to promote peaceful and equivalent development in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Main objective: Project based on geography and critical history, which uses oral history tools and participatory methodologies to strengthen the re-existence of Afro-descendant black women, in order to make their knowledge visible and open spaces for the transmission of their cultural heritage.

The road to belonging from the mestizo urban coexistence. The life story of an Afro-Ecuadorian woman in a racist macho society, with a colonial mind and feelings

Main objective: To present life stories that visualize the colonialist systems in social processes in order to generate proposals for change from community and school education.

(Un)conditional hospitality: Examining experiences of welcoming and recognition of ethnic minority students in a private university in Ecuador

Main objective: To understand the experiences of ethnic minority students in higher education, with a focus on perceptions of belonging and its role in student persistence, dropout and performance.

Gender-based violence in Ecuador

Main objective: This state of the art project on GBV in Ecuador will examine current policies in the country, with a focus on the population in situation of human mobility.

Obstetric violence in Ecuador

Main objective:  To show quantitative and qualitative social evidence on the forms of obstetric violence in Ecuador.

Publications

  • Arteaga-Cruz, E. L. (2017). Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay): definiciones, crítica e implicaciones en la planificación del desarrollo en Ecuador. Saude em debate, 41, 907-919.
  • Baer, R. D., Arteaga, E., Dyer, K., Eden, A., Gross, R., Helmy, H., ... and Reeser, D. (2013). Concepts of race and ethnicity among health researchers: patterns and implications. Ethnicity & Health, 18(2), 211-225.
  • Dávalos, C. and Zaragocin, S. Island feminism meets feminist geopolitics: the spatial dynamics of gender-based violence in the Galapagos Islands. Area (forthcoming).
  • Zaragocin, S. (2022). Ampliando los espacios de los feminismos descoloniales desde los territorios y territorialidades antirracistas. Epistemologias do Sul.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2021). Challenging Anglophone Feminist Geography from Latin American Debates on Territory en B. Gokariskel, M. Hawkins, C. Neubert y S. Smith (Eds.), Feminist Geography Unbound: Intimacy, Territory and Embodied Power. West Virginia University Press, Virginia.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2021). Feminist futurities: Latinx geographies and Latin American.Gender, Place and Culture.
  • Caretta M., Zaragocin S., Turley, B. and Torres, K. (2020). Women´s organizing against extractivism: toward a decolonial multi-sited analysis. Human Geography.
  • Caretta M., Zaragocin S., Turley, B. and Torres, K. (2020). Women´s organizing against extractivism: toward a decolonial multi-sited analysis. Human Geography.
  • Vela, D., Zaragocin, S., Bayón, M. and Arrazola, I. (2020). Imaginando territorios plurales de vida. Una lectura feminista de las resistencias en los movimentos socio-territoriales en el Ecuador. Journal of Latin American Geography.
  • Zaragocin, S. and Caretta M. (2020). Cuerpo-Territorio: A Decolonial Feminist Geographical Method for the Study of Embodiment. Annal of the American Association of Geographers.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2020). Geografía feminista descolonial.Geopauta.
  • Blindon, M and Zaragocin, S. (2019). Mapping gender and feminist geographies in the global context. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2019). Feminist Geography in Ecuador Gender.Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2019). Gendered Geographies of Elimination. Decolonial feminist geographies in Latin American Settler States Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography.
  • Zaragocin, S. (2018). Espacios acuáticos desde una Descolonialidad Hemisférica. Mulier Sapiens, Discurso-Poder-Genero
  • Carcelen-Estrada, A. (2022). The Political Legacy of Black Women in Esmeraldas, Ecuador’s Oldest Colonial Borderland. Radical History Review 144. Area (forthcoming).
  • Carcelen-Estrada, A. (2017). Weaving Abya-Yala: Resistance and the Politics of Indigenous Decolonial Aesthetic Interventions. Special Issue on Indigenous Politics of Resistance. New Diversities, 103-117.
  • Dávalos, C. (2020). Localizing Masculinities in the Global Care Chains: Experiences in Spain and Ecuador. Gender, Place and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1715347
  • Sevilla, A. and Sevilla, E. (2013). Amazonía: una tierra incógnita.  S. Guerra (Coord.). Enigmas geográficos, expediciones y cartografía de las Américas. Quito: Universidad San Francisco de Quito: 87-99.
  • Hill, M. and Maldonado, G. (2020). Para aprender a viajar así: movilidad en la vida de una mujer quechua. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/USFQ Press.
  • Hill, Michael (2019). The Political and Cultural Economies of Tourism in the Andes en L. Seligmann y K. Fine-Dare (Eds.), The Andean World, 619-634. Routledge. 
  • Martinez, D. (2022). Milk agribusiness and territorial transformations. The cases of Argentina and Ecuador. Pampa, Revista de estudios Territoriales.
  • Martinez, D. (2022). Cambio de habitus de consumo en los jóvenes rurales. Convergencia (México). In Press.
  • Martinez, D. (2022). Desterritorialización y conflictos en los espacios rurales Andinos: El caso ecuatoriano. In: Jairo Baquero (comp), Fronteras, territorialización y conflictividades en Colombia y América Latina. Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. In Press.
  • Martinez, D. (2021). Mercado de tierras agrícolas y Desterritorialización. Una mirada desde los Andes ecuatorianos. Geograficando.
  • Martinez, D. (2020). La desterritorializacion: Una noción válida para explicar el mundo rural del siglo XXI. Revista Economía Sociedad y Territorio.
  • Martinez, D. (2019). Territorial dynamics and social differentiation among the peasants of Cayambe in the northern highlands of Ecuador. Journal of agrarian change.
  • Santos, D. (2014). Un mundo oculto: la experiencia del trabajo doméstico en refugiadas colombianas. Chasqui. Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación, No. 126, 87-95.
  • Cervantes, S. & Tuaza, L. (2021). Racismo y Universidades en el Ecuador. UDUAL. Unión de universidades para América Latina y el Caribe. Revista Universidades.
  • Cervantes, S. & Herrera, M. (2021). Propuesta de educación no regular como elemento coadyuvante para la cohesión social, la visibilidad étnica y para generar el sentido de la pertenencia en población afrodescendiente migrante. Repositorio Bibliografico Nacional de Educacion Intercultural Bilingue. https://repositoriointerculturalidad.ec/jspui/

Workshops

At the Institute for Advanced Studies in Inequalities we offer workshops in:

  • Prevention workshop on gender-based violence Black Feminism and Oral History.
  • Masculinities workshop.

Alliances

  • University of Northumbria - UK Grant.

Researchers

Sofía Zaragocín Carvajal

PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge, England. Her research focuses on critical geography, in particular critical geopolitics and decolonial feminist geography. She has written on processes of death-body-territory in cross-border spaces, the geopolitics of the womb in spaces of slow death and the mapping of the criminalization of abortion in Ecuador, among other topics. She is currently working on a hemispheric study on hydro-social cycles, women and mining in the Americas and another study on the racialization of space and violence in Esmeraldas.

szaragocin@usfq.edu.ec

Cristen Lorena Dávalos O’Neill

Cristen Lorena Dávalos O’Neill

D. in Political Science and Human Geography (Queen Mary, University of London, UK). Her research interests include social development, international migration, mobility and gender equity in Latin America.

cdavalos@usfq.edu.ec

María Antonia Carcelén Estrada

PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA. Her interests are transatlantic literature of early modernity (colonial and Golden Age); medieval and renaissance political philosophy; decolonial thought; translation studies; orality; cultural studies.

acarcelen@usfq.edu.ec

michael-douglas-hill

Michael Douglas Hill

D. from the Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) at Emory University, 2005. His interests include inequalities of class, race/ethnicity, and gender/sexuality in the Andean region. Her projects have included research on tourism and heritage, spiritual and religious diversity, organizational culture and life history. She is currently researching inequalities, social solidarity and pandemic technologies in the context of Covid-19 in Ecuador. Co-authored with Georgina Maldonado, she published the book “Para aprender a viajar así: movilidad en la vida de una mujer quechua” (2020, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and USFQ Press).

mhill@usfq.edu.ec

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