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 full-time faculty member in the Department of Global Health at McGill University and co-coordinator of the upcoming BA program in public and global health.

Besides teaching, my current projects are:

“Diagnostic Trajectories: endometriosis and the Validation of Pain in Women”

This study explores diagnostic trajectories of endometriosis and on biological citizenship as a space of resistance, knowledge production, and reimagining of the female body. How women with endometriosis construct new ways of understanding and reclaiming their bodies in response to medical and social forms of misrecognition.

“Visual culture of sexual and reproductive health in Perú”

I seek to investigate the field of women’s sexual and reproductive health from the 1980s onwards. My interest lies in analysing the visual health promotion messages disseminated and institutionalised by various state and public health agencies, and in exploring how these messages constructed particular representations of the female body, motherhood, and sexuality. The aim is to understand how such images not only informed but also produced specific ways of seeing, feeling, and regulating women’s bodies—and how these visual regimes intersected with broader processes of governmentality, modernisation, and development policy.

Black-and-white photo of a public health clinic wall with family-planning murals reading ‘cuántos hijos tener’ and ‘Solo tú puedes decidir’; a woman stands at right carrying a baby in a woven sling.

Centro de Salud I, barrio Ramon Castilla, distrito de Huancabamba, Piura, 2012. Fotografía: Alejandra Ballón. Fuente: Archivo PNSRPF.

Side-by-side transvaginal ultrasound images of the left ovary with arrows and labels marking an endometrioma, ovarian parenchyma, and multiple follicles; screen shows measurements (approx. 4.06 × 2.25 × 3.51 cm; volume ~16.8 mL).

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

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.

A somewhat blurry, black and white scanned photograph featuring three individuals. Two figures are in dresses, and one is wearing a light-colored shirt, possibly a t-shirt.

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.