Paula Escribano

Paula Escribano is a postdoctoral researcher (Juan de la Cierva) at the Grup d’Estudis sobre Reciprocitat (GER) at the University of Barcelona. Her research explores livelihood strategies and regulatory frameworks in rural settings. More specifically, she focuses on the impact of state over-regulation, neoliberal policies and environmental conservation efforts on short food production and distribution chains. Her data collection is primarily based on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews. She is currently participating as a researcher on the projects ‘Valuable food, essential workers, vulnerable people and social responses to crisis: food provisioning systems during the COVID-19 pandemic (FOOD-Pan)’ (PI: Susana Narotzky (UB), (2021-2023) PID2020 -114317GB-I00) and ‘Design, application and consequences of rural public policies in Catalonia, Spain: a transdisciplinary perspective’ (PI: Agata Hummel (University of Warsaw) (2022-2023) POB IV dla rodziców – Nowe Idee).

From 2015 to 2021, Paula taught several courses on Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). These included Ethnographic Reading Seminars, Critical Theory Seminars, Sex/Gender Classification Systems, Qualitative Methodology and several courses on Economic Anthropology, among others.

Paula was awarded a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology by UAB in July 2020, with the thesis «Back-to-the-land» in Catalonia: an anthropological perspective’. Her master’s thesis explored an ecovillage in post-socialist Hungary, where she lived for a year. Paula has taught courses on Qualitative Research and Data Analysis for master’s students, PhD students and researchers in Poland, Mexico, Spain and India. She co-directed the ethnographic documentary film “The aim is to get Moksha”. Tradition and modernity in the practice of Kalarippayattu  in Kerala, India. She is now co-producing an ethnographic documentary about peasants in Kerala, India and filming a documentary on the issues facing shepherds in Catalonia.

Paula is currently undertaking fieldwork in Catalonia with public institutions, shepherds and farmers. She is writing several papers and co-editing the special issue ‘Ruralities (un)tamed? Public policies and connections in the Mediterranean countryside’ with Gabriele Orlandi, Agata Hummel and Panas Karampampas, with collaboration from Cris Shore.