MARÍA BEGOÑA
LEYRA FATOU

PhD in Social Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). Dissertation title: Female Child Labor: Working Girls in Mexico City. Awarded Highest Honors (Summa Cum Laude, unanimously) and the Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award from the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology. Master’s Degree in Gender and Development from the Complutense Institute of International Studies (ICEI-UCM). BA in Social Anthropology and Diploma in Social Work from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). Since 2009, she has been a full-time lecturer in the Department of Social Work and Social Services at the Faculty of Social Work (UCM), and since October 2023 she has held the position of Associate Professor (Profesora Titular de Universidad). Since 2017, she has served as Director of the Gender Unit at the School of Government (EG-UCM). From January 2018 to January 2022, she held the positions of Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs and Quality Assurance and Vice-Dean for International Relations at the Faculty of Social Work (UCM). Since February 2026, she has been the Academic Coordinator of the PhD Program in Social Work at the Faculty of Social Work (UCM). She has been awarded one six-year research evaluation period (Sexenio, 2012–2018) by the National Commission for the Evaluation of Research Activity (CNAI), and has received three teaching evaluation periods (Trienios) with Excellent ratings (2014–2024) through the DOCENTIA faculty evaluation program at UCM. She has participated in research and development cooperation projects in several Latin American countries (Venezuela, Mexico, Paraguay, Argentina), where she has lived for more than five years. She regularly teaches and lectures in postgraduate programs at UCM and at various academic and professional institutions, including the Diplomatic School, AECID, the Red Cross, AACID, and SGAE. Since 2002, she has been a co-founder and member of GENERA (Network of Feminist Women for Gender Equality in Development). She has served as Director of the Master’s Degree in Gender and Development and the Master’s Degree in Childhood and Adolescence Policies, both at EG-UCM, and is a member of the Quality Committee of the Master’s Degree in Strategies and Technologies for Development: Cooperation in a Changing World, jointly offered by UCM and the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). She currently directs the continuing education course: “Childhood and Adolescence Policies: Current Challenges”. Since 2020, she has also taught the module “Equality and Detection of Gender-Based Violence” in the Master’s Degree in Mediation and Conflict Management at UCM. Her research focuses on the anthropology of gender and childhood, as well as gender and development, gender-based violence, kinship anthropology and family diversity, and issues related to the organization, management, and planning of social services. She has undertaken research stays at several academic and research institutions, including the Welfare School at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) (2012); the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Research Methodology at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (IdIHCS), National University of La Plata (Argentina) (2015 and 2016); and within the European RISEWISE program (Rise Women with Disabilities in Social Engagement) in Stockholm (Sweden) (2018), Rome (Italy) (2019), and Ljubljana (Slovenia) (2020). In 2022, she completed a three-month research stay at the Department of Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies (CAFS), School of Social Sciences and Education, California State University, Bakersfield (USA), and a one-month stay as a Visiting Senior Researcher at the School of Education and Social Work, University of Sussex (UK).