I am a feminist researcher focusing on women’s rights in Latin America, particularly in Ecuador and the Andean region. My work aims to understand how women interact with laws, projects, and institutions. I am interested in how women react, adapt, and/or normalise behaviours to survive, endure or disrupt hierarchical and subordinative power structures. My research follows a feminist and decolonial epistemology and relies on ethnographic and arts-based research methods. I hold an MSc in Latin American Development and a PhD in Gender and Development from King’s College London. Before working as an academic, I worked as a journalist in Ecuador (2009-2016).
My doctoral research titled ‘Cuesta arriba y siguiendo el chaquiñán. Indigenous women’s path through violence in plurilegal Ecuador’ examines indigenous women’s interaction with two legal systems (state law and indigenous justice). It asks questions about indigenous justice, women’s rights, and inequality reproduction based on gendered and racialised expectations. As part of my research, I presented a photographic exhibition to open a discussion about hybridity in the Ecuadorian Andes. After finishing my PhD, I developed an arts-based research project titled ‘Portraying indigenous women: Between endurance and resistance’ funded by Visual Embodied Methodologies (VEM) network. Until September 2021, I was a Visiting Research Associate in the Department of International Development at King’s College London.
In September 2021, I joined the Department of War Studies at King’s College London as Lecturer in International Relations and Gender Education. In September 2022, I will be joining the ‘Connecting Three Worlds: Socialism, Medicine and Global Health After World War II’ research team as a postdoctoral fellow with a project enquiring how socialism has shaped and continues to shape sexual and reproductive health rights in Latin America, particularly in Ecuador and Peru. My research project focuses on the circulation of political discourses from governments and political leaders vis-à-vis the narratives created by feminist unions and socialist committees. It aims to historicise the expansion of infrastructure and coverage of public health services in connection with the health cultures produced by socialism, using a gender lens. In addition, one of my research goals is to reflect on moral governance within Latin American socialist discourses.
Espinoza Carvajal, A. (2021) ‘COVID-19 and the Limitations of Official Responses to Gender-
Based Violence in Latin America: Evidence from Ecuador.’ Bulletin of Latin America Research, Special Issue on Covid in Latin America and the Caribbean
Espinoza Carvajal, A., Medina Cordova, L. ‘Building on Transnational Indigeneity: Representations of Ecuadorian Indigenous Peoples in Contemporary Literature and Photography’. (Submitted for the edited volume Indigenous Studies in and of Latin America, edited by Dr Tracy Devine Guzmán, University of Miami)
Espinoza Carvajal, A., Diaz Arcos, D., Sefla, N. (2021) ‘Resistencias. Lugares, Tiempos y Espacios.’ Arts Cabinet [Online]
Espinoza Carvajal, A., Diaz Arcos, D., Sefla, N. (2021) ‘Historias que nos cuentan. Historias que nos contamos.’ Arts Cabinet [Online]
Espinoza Carvajal, A., Diaz Arcos, D., Sefla, N. (2020) ‘Before the Image.’ Arts Cabinet [Online]
Espinoza Carvajal, A. (2018) Hybridity and Identity. Research output: Non textual form– Photographic exhibition.
