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Maria Rodó-Zárate leads a European project to analyse social inequalities from an intersectional perspective

The researcher has recently joined Pompeu Fabra University to conduct the INTERMAPS project over five years, thanks to an ERC Starting Grant 2021 from the European Research Council.

10.10.2022

Imatge inicial

Maria Rodó-Zárate, a researcher with the UPF’s Department of Political and Social Sciences, is to receive funding from the European Union to carry out a project that aims to contribute to the study of inequalities and discrimination, based on the development of a theoretical model to conceptualize intersectional inequalities, from a spatial and emotional perspective.

Maria Rodó-Zárate: “INTERMAPS will allow better understanding how structural inequalities (re)produce and how they affect people’s daily lives in different ways”

She will be the principal investigator of the project “Mapping Intersectionality: A Conceptual and Methodological Model for the Study of Inequalities and Discrimination” (INTERMAPS), which is funded with about 1.2 million euros. Set to run for five years, it was selected in the framework of the European Commission’s ERC Starting Grant 2021 call of the European Research Council, and was launched in September of this year.

The INTERMAPS project will deepen into the concept of intersectionality

Intersectionality is a concept that emerges from black feminism in the United States in the 1980s, but in the last decade it has gone viral: it has become the most prominent analytical framework for addressing inequalities, and it has had a major impact on research debates, academia, social movements and also on public institutions.

Its main premises are that people with different positions in relation to their gender, ethnicity, age, social class, sexual orientation, etc., experience inequality in various ways. Despite the fact that this concept is so widespread, there is a lack of methodological proposals that characterize how this variability is shaped in daily life.

To make headway in this field, through her innovative project Maria Rodó-Zárate will deepen into the understanding of the concept of intersectionality from a geographical perspective, which understands place as being central in these power dynamics, and which also incorporates the emotional dimension on inequalities.

“INTERMAPS will allow better understanding how structural inequalities (re)produce and how they affect people’s daily lives in different ways, building bridges between feminist and postcolonial theories, critical geographies and political and social sciences, overcoming the difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social sciences”, Maria Rodó- Zárate explains.

What methodology will the research use?

Maria Rodó-Zárate’s research will include a new theoretical model to conceptualize intersectional inequalities from a spatial and emotional perspective, as well as the development of new, specific methods that combine and integrate qualitative, quantitative, digital and spatial approaches.

“We want to show how the interrelationship of social positions produces concrete forms of inequality and discrimination, which are shaped differently in different spaces”, Maria Rodó- Zárate concludes.

A researcher at the crossroads between political sciences, gender studies and human geography

Maria Rodó-Zárate (Manresa, Bages, 1986) has a bachelor’s degree in Political Sciences and Administration from the UAB (2008), a master’s degree in Women, Gender and Citizenship from the UB (2010), and a PhD in Geography from the UAB. Before joining UPF, she has been a PNDP/CAPAs postdoctoral researcher at the UEPG (Brazil), a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral research fellow at the UOC and a Serra Húnter professor at the UB’s Faculty of Education, in addition to doing several research stays in the United States, Brazil and Ireland.

Her subjects of study focus on feminist geographies and sexualities, with particular emphasis on the theory of intersectionality and the Right to the City. As a result of her research, she created Relief Maps, a methodology for the collection, analysis and viewing of data on the emotional dimension of inequalities and intersectional discrimination, which received the Ramon Molinas award for the best social impact project (2018).

A consultant and an educator on gender and LGTBI issues for various public administrations and associations, in 2021 she published the book  Interseccionalitat. Desigualtats, llocs i emocions, published by Tigre de paper publishing house.

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SDG - Sustainable Development Goals:

05. Gender equality
10. Reduced inequalities
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