Doctoral Candidate Sara Ibáñez O'Donnell

Sara Ibáñez O’Donnell is a Ph.D. candidate at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. As part of the Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies (GPTS) and supervised by Prof. Dr. Christiane Brosius, her work deals with forms of knowledge production in diasporic activism against gendered violence. Sara holds a B.A. in Humanities, during which she spent a semester abroad at Maastricht University, and a second B.A. in Journalism & Media, both from Pompeu Fabra University. She studied a master’s degree in Transcultural Studies also at Heidelberg University. 

Her PhD project connects various forms of Latina/X activist practices against gender-based violence operating within Berlin’s transnational representational framework. It traces collective forms of performative activism linked to Frauentag on the 8^th of March (8M) and the Day Against Violence Against Women on the 25^th November (25N). Using ethnographic methods, it seeks to situate and trace at various scales multimodal practices to better understand Latina/X activism’s agency in co-producing knowledge around femi(ni)cide. Key questions of this research work include: How is Latina/X activism against gender-based violence performing within Berlin’s transnational activist framework? What agents are shaping transcultural knowledge-making on femi(ni)cide and where does diasporic agency lie? Which epistemologies are at play through these forms of mediated knowledge, place and memory-making?