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Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda, MA, MSc, PhD
(email at susana.carro-ripalda@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
I am a social anthropologist with strong interests in interdisciplinary work, particularly at the intersection between social, medical and psychological anthropology.
I have worked extensively in Mexican Purhepecha communities. My doctoral thesis (University of Edinburgh)explored the forms in which indigenous women constitute selves and persons, relationships, and realities in their daily interactions, interactions which included the local and regional saints. Thus in my doctoral thesis, I discussed extensively saints' agency and personhood and their position in the Purhepecha social worlds.
More recently, I have been investigating the impact of transnational migration on people left behind in Mexican indigenous communities. My project, entitled "Living in Absence" and funded by the British Academy and the Carnegie Trust, has focused in the way young wives with absent husbands reconstitute their own selves, renegotiate relationships within households, and create intimacy in transnational contexts, all of which implies a large emotional cost. I have now commenced the second phase of this project, entitled "Growing up in Absence", which has a more socio-medical focus, as I look at the effect of parental migration on children's personal and emotional development, and on their psychological wellbeing.
I have also recently started research on a project entitled "Health Mobility and trans-national health care within the frontiers of the European Union: a Spanish/UK case study", which ex[lores the complex ideological conflicts at the heart of health mobililty in Europe, and their relationship to processes of European identity and citizenship.
I have also conducted post-doctoral research in Europe, where I was funded by the Basque Country Government to explore issues of gender, identity, and space at the Basque/Spanish-French border.
In addition to my research experience, I have taught at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, delivering specialist Honours courses on the Anthropology of Central America and on Psychological Anthropology, and have been involved in the MSc on Global Movements, Social Justice, and Sustainability at the University of Glasgow. At Durham, I teach courses on Medical Anthropology, Research Methods and Current Issues in Social Anthropology.
Research Groups
Department of Anthropology
Research Interests
- Children's experiences of parental migration
- Personal and inter-personal processes in transnational migration
- Selfhood and personhood
- The rhetorical and constitutive power of emotions
Selected Publications
Books: sections
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (Forthcoming). "Ya no es como antes” género, familia y migración transnacional en una comunidad purépecha del lago de Pázcuaro. In La familia hoy. Transiciones y recomposiciones. Arias, P. & Moctezuma Yano, P. Mexico.:
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2002). Envejecer en Jaracuaro [Growing old in Jaracuaro]. In America Latina, Historia y Sociedad. Pique, R. & Ventura, M. Barcelona: Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona/Institut Catala de Cooperacio Iberoamericana. 457-478.
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2000). Pilgrimages. In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Caribbean and Latin American Culture. Balderston, D. et al London and New York: Routledge.
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2000). Saint's Days. In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Caribbean and Latin American Culture. Balderston, D. et al London and New York: Routledge.
Edited works: conference proceedings
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2001). Del Objeto a la experiencia: hacia una perspectiva fenomenological del estudio de la religion en Mexico. (From object to experience: towards a phenomenological perspective of the study of religion in Mexico). Actas del IV Congreso de CEALC, CEALC/Universidad Rovira i Virgili.
Journal papers: academic
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (Forthcoming). The rhetoric of suffering and the making of persons in a Purhepecha community in Western Mexico. ASAonline (Special Issue: The Rhetoric of Personhood. Ed. Michael Carrithers ).
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2001). El Senor de Caracuaro: una etnografia fenomenologica de una peregrinacion en Mexico [Our Lord o Caracuaro: a phenomenological ethnography of a pilgrimage in Mexico]. Guaraguao. Revista de Cultura Latinoamericana 13: 28-50.
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2001). Objeto o experiencia? Apuntes para una etnografia fenomenologica de la religion en America Latina [Object or experience? Notes for a phenomenological study of religion in Latin America]. Guaraguao. Revista de Cultura Latinoamericana 12: 63-76.
- Carro-Ripalda, S. (2000). A relationship with Senor de Caracuaro. Culture and Religion 1(2): 211-231.