Paula Escribano

Paula Escribano is part-time proffesor (since 2016) and researcher at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is a member of the Laboratory of Personal Networks and Communities (egolab-GRAFO, www.egolab.cat) at the Research Group of Fundamentally Oriented Anthropology (GRAFO, www.grafo.cat). Her research addresses two main areas: cultural change in advanced societies; and self-sufficiency economy and public policies in rural Catalonia. In both areas she focuses on the influence of environmental values and the effects of Capitalism on society. For this purpose, she uses ethnography with special attention to the fieldwork and the analysis of social capital.

Paula received her PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology in July 2020 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She defended a thesis by compendium of articles titled “Back-to-the-land” in Catalonia: An anthropological perspective directed by José Luis Molina and Miranda J. Lubbers. Paula received her Master’s degree Ethnographic Research, Anthropological Theory and Intercultural Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where she wrote the thesis “Utopias in post-socialism: The case of an Hungarian ecovillage”, directed by Aurora González and José Luis Molina (2013). She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Granada (2012) and spent one year at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary. There she had the opportunity to collaborate with the project “Identity and Culture in Hungary” developed by the Department of Anthropology led by Richard Papp. In this framework she conducted her intensive fieldwork at the ecoville of Gyurufu, in the south of the country.

Paula has offered training courses in Qualitative Data Analysis for students, teachers and researchers in Poland, Mexico and Catalonia. She teaches economic anthropology, gender anthropology and critical theory among other diverse areas.

Currently she is leading the project “Rural self-management initiatives and public policies: A conceptualization of neo-peasants” funding by Wenner-Gren Foundation in colaboration with Dr. Agata Hummel from Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw (Poland). Paula is also collaborating with the research project Strategies of Survival in Poor Households: The Role of Formal and Informal Support Networks in Times of Economic Crisis (Recercaixa, 2015ACUP 00145). Principal Researchers: Miranda Lubbers and Hugo Valenzuela. She is also collaborating with the research project The community dimension of social exclusion and precariousness (MINECO-DIMCOM). Principal Researchers: Hugo Valenzuela and Miranda Lubbers