Valeria López Álvaro

Project Title (Tentative): To the Streets: Practices of Resistance Performed by Feminist Activists During the Coronavirus Pandemic in Mexico and Ecuador (2020-2023).

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thies (University of Tübingen, Germany) and Prof. Dr. Gabriela González Ortuño (UNAM, Mexico).

My research aims to generate knowledge about the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the experiences of confinement, lockdown, and states of emergency for feminist activists in two countries. Within the framework of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Global South, my project will explore how conflict emerged for feminist activists in two different and paradigmatic contexts, leading to their necessity to take to the streets. I will employ a comparative and transnational approach based on interviews and co-creation spaces of two specific case studies, which will demonstrate the implications of the pandemic on the historical memory of these social movements. Additionally, my research will delve into new regimes of subjectivity and proximity. Upon completing my PhD, I aspire to examine the possible horizons of interaction between two groups of feminist activism in the Global South, as well as the potential for reshaping the social landscape by them, emphasizing the significance of taking the streets as spaces of action and resistance.

Academic Background and Work Experience

Valeria López Álvaro (Ecuador) holds an Academic Superior Degree in Music with a specialization in Piano (2008), a B.A. in History from Universidad Católica del Ecuador (2013 - Academic Scholarship), and an M.A. in Cultural Studies with a focus on Arts and Gender from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (2016), where she received an Academic Scholarship and her thesis was published as a book by the university. Between 2016 and 2018, she was a member of the Feminist Platform "Vivas Nos Queremos, Ni una Menos - Ecuador". She further pursued her education with a second M.A. in Education from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, awarded the Scholarship for Teachers committed to confronting the pandemic crisis. Valeria worked as a teacher of Latin American History, Foundations of Political Debate (secondary level), and Critical Pedagogies (higher education level) at INEPE from 2016 to 2021, where she also served as Coordinator of the Humanities Department and Member of the Board of Directors (INEPE, 2018 - 2021). Since 2022 in Germany, she has been a university-level instructor focusing on Latin American Feminisms, Critical Pedagogies, Decolonial Education, and Latin American History (EPiZ - BtE).
Since 2023, she has been pursuing her PhD studies at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies within the Philosophische Fakultät at Universität Tübingen (Germany). She was awarded the Scholarship Research Grants Doctoral Programmes in Germany by the DAAD for academic excellence. Since February 2024, she has been an associate member of the doctoral research group "Collocations- Constructing Interknowledges, Negotiating Proximities".