Daniela Meneses Sala
St Catharine's College
Biography:
I was born in Peru, and growing up I lived for some years in Venezuela. I received my Law Degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. I hold an MSc in Public Policy from UCL, and an MSc in Gender(Sexuality) from LSE. In addition to my academic career, I have a decade of experience as a journalist. Most of my it was spent working for the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, where among other roles I was in charge of the Op-ed section. I also published an opinion column for some years, focusing mainly on gender issues. More recently, I have worked for Comité de Lectura, a Peruvian independent media project, where I produced several podcasts on issues such as race, gender and disabilities.
Research: Contemporary Peruvian Feminism: A Queer Photographic Archive of Feelings
In a context where feminist activism is gaining popularity and seeing new forms of embodiment in Latin America, I propose to investigate what can we learn about contemporary Peruvian feminist activism and its struggles if we start from a photographic archive of feelings. I will do this by first working with feminist activists to create a photographic archive of affectively charged ephemera (such as personal correspondence or gestures), and then exploring what this bottom-up approach can do for our efforts to conceptualise feminist activists and activism. Crucially, I understand affect not as something to be found merely ‘inside’ activists, but as something relational and embedded in prevailing structures of inequality. I am interested in making an intervention in feminist studies, particularly in the context of Peru and Latin America. Rather than approaching the field through westernised ideas and ideals of what feminist activism looks like, I propose, through the creation of a queer archive, a ‘bottom-up’ approach that will allow me to explore how feminist activism is being affectively experienced on the ground. By turning to feelings, and their politics, I offer a different entry point to explore important feminist issues such as intersectionality and postcolonial studies.
Supervisor: Geoffrey Maguire
My PhD is funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programme
Selected publications
- Aráuz, Nelva, Clare Wenham, Corina Rueda and Daniela Meneses. 2022. “Una balanza desigual: los trabajos de las mujeres en tiempos de Covid-19, el caso de Panamá”. Debate Feminista, 64, 3-31.
- Wenham, Clare, Nelva Aráuz, Daniela Meneses and Corina Rueda. 2022. “Explicitly Sexing Health Security: Analysing the downstream effects of Panama’s sex-segregated COVID-19 disease control policy". Health Policy and Planning, 37(6),728-736.
- Meneses, Daniela. 2021. “Vibrant lockdown walks”. Engenderings. July 28, 2021.
- Meneses, Daniela. 2019. “Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas: un estudio de discurso y poder en un grupo de Facebook peruano opuesto a la «ideología de género»”. Anthropologica, 37(42), 129-154.
Selected journalistic work
- Op-ed columns at El Comercio
- Podcast La mala sangre
Social media
Twitter: @menesesdaniela
Instagram: @lamalasangre.pe