Camila Hernández Martínez has defended her doctoral thesis

Camila Hernández Martínez defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Transformation, resistance and violence in bodies: experiences of migrant women from Colombia in Asturias, Spain”. This work was supervised by Dr. Rocío Pérez Gañán from the Department of Sociology and Dr. Isabel Carrera Suárez, from the Department of Anglo-Germanic and French Philology at the University of Oviedo.

Hernández’s thesis explored the corporal and cultural transformations experienced by Colombian migrant women in Asturias. Through life histories, the study sought to make visible and understand the interaction between gender, violence, migration and bodily changes. The results, analysed through Grounded Data Theory, reveal various forms of violence (physical, emotional, symbolic and structural) in the lives of these women, both in Colombia and Spain, throughout their migratory trajectory. The research also addressed how women’s bodies become sites of oppression and resistance, interpellating the cultural construction of femininity and social desire traversed by coloniality and patriarchy.