Dr Paloma Gay Blasco

Dr Paloma Gay Blasco

Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2950
Email
pgyb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 3
Location
United Colleges
Office hours
Monday and Tuesday 9am-10am

 

Research areas

I am a feminist anthropologist with a particular interest in gender violence, the marginalisation of ethnic minorities, and the development of innovative research methods (autoethnography, collaborative writing with participants, multimodal ethnography, online ethnography). Much of my work attempts to find ways to make anthropology more accountable and accessible to the people whose lives we study.

I have worked extensively on Romani issues, but also on ageing, wellbeing and the good life, COVID-19, the oppression of minorities by the state (particularly through housing and education policies), gender and sex, women’s lives, migration, religion and kinship.

Recent publications include Writing Friendship (Palgrave, 2020), a reciprocal ethnography/autoethnography co-authored with Liria Hernández, where we examine our intertwined lives as non-Romani academic and Romani street vendor. More recently, with Martin Fotta from the Czech Academy of Sciences I have edited Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience (2023, Berghahn) which gathers the testimonies of NGO workers, street vendors, activists, scholars, health professionals, and creative writers to chronicle the devastating impact of the pandemic on Romani communities globally.

At the moment, I am working on two research projects. The first investigates the different kinds of violence that shape the lives of Romani women and asks about the ethics and politics of research on gender violence within minority communities. This project was developed through dialogue with Spanish Roma NGOs and supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme. The second one focuses on the ways older people in Scotland and Spain sustain their wellbeing during and after the pandemic, and conceptualise the good life.

PhD supervision

  • Shanay Cowan
  • Hannah Fitchett
  • Luke McGinty
  • Hadil Louz
  • Tamika McLay
  • Jing Liu

Selected publications

 

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