About
MariaCaterina La Barbera is a PhD in Human Rights from the University of Palermo, Italy (2008). Her field of research is Feminist Legal and Social Philosophy. Intersectionality is her main area of specialization. Her research is interdisciplinary, covering Human Rights, Critical Legal Studies, Law & Society, Gender Studies, Intersectionality Studies, Public Policies Implementation, and Citizenship Studies. The common thread of her research is the conceptualization of equality and difference, focusing on intersectionality from a human rights perspective. The concepts of interlocking inequalities, social justice, social position, and membership are key in her research. In particular, she investigates how social structures and political and legal institutions shape individual and collective positioning, focusing on the inequalities produced at the intersection of gender structures and migration regimes. She recently explored how theory shapes the praxis of intersectionality; how praxis affects its conceptualization; and how its implementation via public policies impacts society. She is currently studying the conceptualization of integration and membership underlying nationality acquisition. She engages in empirically-informed philosophy thanks to long-standing collaborations with sociologists and political scientists.
Her research is published in international high impact journals, such as Politics & Gender, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Law & Society Review, Policy & Society, Critical Discourse Studies, International Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Global Jurist, Andamios or Diritto & Questioni Pubbliche. She edited the volumes Identity and Migration in Europe (Springer 2015), Igualdad y no discriminación en España (Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales 2016), and Challenging the Borders of Justice in the Age of Migrations (Springer 2019).
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
MariaCaterina La Barbera, L. Cassain & P. Caravantes. 2023. The discursive construction of intersectionality in public policy implementation, Critical Discourse Studies, 10.1080/17405904.2023.2228937.
MariaCaterina La Barbera and I. Wences. 2023. The polysemy of gender discrimination in the IACTHR jurisprudence: towards the elimination of structural gender discrimination through transformative reparations, European Journal of Legal Studies, 15(1): 171-212, 10.2924/EJLS.2023.014.
R. Tildesley, MariaCaterina La Barbera and E. Lombardo. 2023. ‘What use is the legislation to me?’ Contestations around the meanings of gender equality legislation and its strategic use to drive structural change in university organizations, Gender, Work and Organization, 30(6): 1996–2013, 10.1111/gwao.13039.
S. Boulos and MariaCaterina La Barbera. 2023. Obstacles to and opportunities for protecting human rights at the city level: The case of Madrid City Council Human Rights Plan (2017–2019), International Journal of Human Rights, 27(4):659-684 10.1080/13642987.2022.2142213.
MariaCaterina La Barbera, J. Espinosa-Fajardo & P. Caravantes. 2023. Implementing Intersectionality in Public Policies: Key Factors in the Madrid City Council, Spain. Politics & Gender, 19(3): 675-702, 10.1017/S1743923X22000241.
MariaCaterina La Barbera and M. Cruells López. 2019. Towards the Implementation of Intersectionality in the European Multilevel Legal Praxis: B. S. v Spain. Law & Society Review, 53(4): 1167-1201, 10.1111/lasr.12435.
MariaCaterina La Barbera E. Lombardo. 2019. Towards equal sharing of care? Judicial implementation of EU equal employment and work–life balance policies in Spain. Policy & Society, 38(4): 626-642,10.1080/14494035.2019.1661560.
MariaCaterina La Barbera and E. Lombardo. 2018. The long and winding road”: policy implementation of work-life balance through judicial litigation in Spain. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 21(1): 9-24, 10.1080/13876988.2017.1363949, SJR: Q1, 309/972, CiteScore Rank 0,7.
MariaCaterina La Barbera. 2017. Ban without Prosecution, Conviction without Punishment, and Circumcision without Cutting: A Critical Appraisal of Anti-FGM Laws in Europe, Global Jurist, 17(2), 10.1515/gj-2016-0012.
MariaCaterina La Barbera. 2017. Intersectionality and its journeys: from counterhegemonic feminist theories to law of European multilevel democracy, Investigaciones Feministas, 8(1): 133-151, 10.5209/INFE.54858.
GEPPN: Gender Equality Policy in Practice Network 