Mariacaterina La Barbera

 

 

Mariacaterina La Barbera

Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC

c/ Albasanz 26-28 (despacho 1F-17)

28037 Madrid, España

mariacaterina.labarbera@cchs.csic.es

Who am I?
I am attorney at law and PhD in Human Rights by the University of Palermo, Italy. My PhD dissertation, entitled “Multicentered Feminism: Revisiting the Female Circumcision/Genital Mutilation/Surgery/Cutting Discourse”, was focused on the debate on feminism and multiculturalism using female genital mutilation as analytical case. My research interests are: Social Inequality and Subordination, Gender Studies, Feminisms, Intersectionality, Anti-essentialism; Religious and Cultural Diversity, Multiculturalism, Migratory Processes, Immigration Law and Human Rights; Social and Cultural Anthropology.

During the years of doctoral research, I have been Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, the Universidad Taronjers of Valencia, and the University of California, Berkeley. I worked as a Staff researcher at the Law School of the University of California, Berkeley, and I stayed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the same University. Lately, I have been appointed as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Studies in Politics, Law, and Society of the University of Palermo, Italy. I am currently working at the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Spanish Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid.

What am I going to research?
My contribution in the project consists in providing an original perspective that combines legal analysis with ethnographic fieldwork. My goal is to analyze whether and how Intercultural Education deals with the formation and transformation of gender identity that take place during the migration processes. I will analyze the national and European legal frame of Intercultural Education as well as their practices in Madrid. The study will consist of an interdisciplinary research that combines legal-political methodology of the legislation on cultural diversity and education with the ethnographic study of school practice. The novelty is the use of intersectionality approach to analyze how gender, ethnicity, and economic level interact in a non-definable way. This approach will be used to interpret the legal frame and the interviews conducted at school. The aim is to examine the current state of normative on the Intercultural Education and to propose guidelines for policy and action at the institutional level.