Laura Langa Martínez

Laura Langa holds a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master’s Degree in Public Orientation Anthropology from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Since 2016 she is a predoctoral researcher at ILLA-CSIC (with an FPU contract funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports) and a PhD candidate in Human Sciences at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Her doctoral thesis work focuses on analyzing the effects of post-conflict institutions, whether economic, symbolic, memorial, funerary, etc., on the Colombian population, and the dynamics that the communities themselves develop to coexist with the daily effects of the violence, when producing different exchanges, transformations, resistances and accommodations. Her proposal therefore raises two levels of approach to reality, on the one hand the analysis of institutional practices and on the other its resonance in the daily dynamics of communities, since what is intended to know are the processes experienced.

Previously, she worked as a researcher at the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action, IECAH, with which she continues to collaborate. She has conducted several previous investigations regarding cooperation with the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (Luis Miguel Puerto Research Prize) and humanitarian practices in the Saharawi refugee camps, both investigations have been published. Since 2017 she is part of the Editorial Board of the Anthropology Journal of Public Guidance published by the Autonomous University of Madrid.

She has taught university at the Complutense University of Madrid, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Medellín and the graduate programs of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation. In 2017, she conducted a three-month research stay, funded by the MECD, in the Conflict and Peace research group at the University of Medellin.

Main publications: 

Books: 

• (2014) De hijos e hijas de las nueves a sujetos universales. Una exploración crítica sobre las actuaciones humanitarias en los campamentos de refugiados/as de Tinduf, Argelia, desde 1975 a la actualidad. Madrid:  Monográficos IUDC-UCM
• (2013) Modalidades de cooperación bilateral con los pueblos indígenas de América Latina y el Caribe. Reconstruyendo el término indígena. Madrid: Instituto Universitario de Desarrollo y Cooperación

Articles and chapters of books: