About Me

Two women outdoors in a rural, mountainous area. One woman in a gray hooded jacket and jeans sits on rocks; the other woman, wearing a pink hat, is seated next to a bucket and blue tub.

I am an incoming faculty member in the Department of Global Health at McGill University, where I will begin my position in August 2025.

Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. This year, I am teaching three courses:

Medical Anthropology
Politics, Social Organization, and Law and Culture
Medicine and Politics

Besides teaching, my current project “Diagnostic Trajectories: Learning to Unlearn the Body and the Validation of Pain in Women,” delves into women’s experiences navigating the medical diagnostic process in Perú. In this work, I investigate how gender biases and preconceived notions about the female body influence diagnosis, treatment, and, ultimately, the validation of women’s pain. The aim is to explore how women must often “unlearn” their bodies—challenging culturally ingrained ideas and medical stereotypes that have historically undermined their experiences of pain.

I am also a research scientist at CINAPS, the Center for Primary Health Care Research . My work focuses on various ongoing research projects, with a particular emphasis on women’s health and qualitative research. In addition, I mentor medical students and supervise their dissertations.

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An image of a public health building on a cloudy day, with a number of people waiting outside. There are banners relating to health topics and a dog visible in the foreground.

Education

I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Hull. My dissertation research examines loneliness and social capital among older women in a Northern UK city, exploring how diverse forms of capital—social, cultural, and symbolic—intersect with the physical and social realities of aging. Using the theoretical frameworks of, capital, embodiment and intersectionality, the study highlights how overlapping identities, such as gender, age, class, and health status, shape women’s experiences of loneliness and their ability to access social resources. It critiques the marginalization of older women’s voices within societal and academic narratives, emphasizing the need to center their perspectives in discussions of aging and social connection. The concept of aging in place further underscores how physical and social environments influence their capacity to sustain relationships and participate in community life. This research offers a holistic and transformative perspective, advocating for inclusive policies that address structural inequalities while recognizing older women’s agency and resilience.

My PhD and dissertation research was fully funded by the University of Hull.

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A photograph shows two women sitting at a table, with one woman in a black patterned top looking at the other, who is holding a phone. The table is covered with yarn, knitted crafts, packaged foods, and pastries.

I hold two Master of Science degrees: i) Medical Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh, and my thesis was about biological citenzenship and Parkinson's disease groups in Scotland. ii) Gerontology from the University of Southampton, where I researched universal pensions and their effect on the rural ageing population in Peru. Additionally, I was awarded the Leslie Kirkley Fellowship at the Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford. I collaborated with the institution´s several projects while working on a proposal about the co-production of health in rural areas of Perú.

I studied my BA in Anthropology at the Universidad Católica de Perú. My thesis focused on total institutions, experiences of ageing, and life projects.