MARIBEL PONFERRADA ARTEAGA

PhD in Social Anthropology by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she defended her dissertation “Girls and power in schools. Academic, social and gender identitities among youth from suburban areas”. She has an appointment as  Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Nuffield Foundation-International Fellowship Program  in the international comparative project The Children of Immigrants in Schools (US National Science Foundation). She obtained her MA in Basic and Applied Research in Anthropology also at UAB with a thesis entitled The construction of identities through schooling: gender and education among working class youth in Barcelona, in July 2004. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Catalonia, California and México,  and has been the coordinator of a project commissioned by the Catalan Ombudsman for Children on School Climate, Youth Cultures and Bullying experiences at the Institute of Childhood and the Urban World. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology and sociology of youth, gender and education in the context of immigrant and working class settings.

From November 2006 to June 2007, she had an appointment as a Junior Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During her stay and as an International Fellow on the Nuffield Foundation-NSF The Children of Immigrants in Schools project coordinated by Dr. Richard Alba, she conducted ethnographic research among immigrant youth of Mexican descent in rural California schools and communities.

Her contributions include:

Ponferrada, M. i Carrasco, S. Climas escolares, malestares y relaciones entre iguales en las escuelas catalanas de secundaria.  ICEV. Núm. 4, enero / marzo 2008.

Ponferrada, M. (2007) Jóvenes, identidades y relaciones en la escuelas de la periferia urbana. II International Conference on Ethnography and Education, Migrations and Citizenships. Barcelona, 5-8 September 2007.

Ponferrada, M. (2006) “Identity construction among working-class youths in a context of linguistic and cultural diversity”, IX EASA Biennial conference, Bristol, September 18-22  (conference paper)

Ponferrada, M. et al. (2006) Convivència i confrontació entre iguals als centres educatius, Barcelona, CIIMU. (research report)