Ailsa Peate

Host supervisor at EHU: Ignacia Perugorría 

Type of stay: Visiting Researcher

Home institution: University of Westminster (Reino Unido)

Period of the stay: 07/04/2026 al 05/05/ 2026 

Dr. Ailsa Peate is a Senior Lecturer in Social Justice Studies, Latin American Studies, and Heritage Studies at the University of Westminster (UK). She is the lead of the Gender, Heritage and Memory Research Network and serves as Conference Secretary for Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies (WiSPS) for the UK and Ireland. She is a member of Research Committee on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). 

She is currently working on her second monograph, Narcoculture and the Narco-Patriarchy in Sinaloa, Mexico (Tamesis, 2027), as well as co-editing a special issue entitled Necropolitics and Mass Violence (Emerald Press, 2026), linked to the symposium “From Enforced Disappearance to Border Violence: New Directions in the Study of Necropolitics” (September 2026), hosted by the University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea and funded by the ISA.

Her research focuses on several interrelated strands spanning Latin America, gender, violence, heritage, and memory. She examines how memory, heritage, and cultural narratives are constructed in Latin American contexts marked by violence, organized crime, and gender/sexuality dynamics. She also analyses how these processes are articulated through literature, museums, collective memory, and cultural activism, with particular attention to participatory and representative forms of citizenship. A central concern of her research is the banalisation of violence, necropolitics, and the use of power as capital, particularly in northern Mexico, as well as participatory action aimed at supporting victims and survivors.

Key areas of her research include:

  • Transitional and pre-transitional justice processes in Latin America, with particular emphasis on symbolic forms of reparation and memory.
  • Representations of gender and sexuality in contexts of state violence, organized crime, and heritage-making.
  • Studies of narcotrafficking culture (narcoculture) in northern Mexico (the state of Sinaloa), necropolitics, and gore capitalism (Valencia, 2010), focusing on aesthetics of violence, beauty, and power in this context.
  • Collaboration with museums, memory institutions, and NGOs in Colombia and Mexico to develop and critically interrogate participatory art projects, the visibility of women victims, and practices of musealisation/heritage-making in pre-transitional and transitional contexts.

Recent publications

Peate, A. (2025). Symbolic Reparations, Buchonas, and Power in Mayra Martell’s Gore (2017) and Chulada (2018). In N. Abaladejo García & F. Noble (eds.), Authoring Female Identities in Spanish and Latin American Art and Media, pp. 153–181.

Peate, A., Tamayo Gómez, C., & Maystorovich, N. (eds.) (2025). Special Issue: Criminology in Post-Violence Transitions: Exploring the Intersections between Human Rights, Grassroots Activism, Transitional Justice, Memory, and Criminology. International Journal for Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy.

Peate, A., Delgado Rojas, C., & Posada Villada, V. (2025). Representing Experiences of Sexual Violence in Colombia: Participatory Art and the Collective Memory Space in Doris Salcedo’s Fragmentos (2018). In J. C. Ashton (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Heritage and Gender. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 211–229.

Peate, A. (2025). Questions of Representation in Miss Museo: Woman, Nation, Identity, and Citizenship (2007). In C. Trimiño (ed.), Feminist Territories, Resistant Voices in Colombia: Genders, Intersections, Human Rights, and Critical Memory. Tunja: Editorial Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, pp. 52–71.

Peate, A. (2024). “The Narco Is in Fashion”: Corporeality, Gender Violence, and Narcoculture in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 100(2), pp. 1027–1051.

Peate, A. (2024). Subverting Sex, Gender, and Genre in Cuban and Mexican Detective Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Book

Subverting Sex, Gender, and Genre in Cuban and Mexican Detective Fiction

The presence of the body and sexuality has characterised detective fiction since its inception in the 1920s. Excitement lies at the core of narratives built around discovery and revelation: motives and criminals are gradually uncovered alongside sexualised and/or violated bodies—from femmes fatales to the corpses of victims of violence. A genre beloved by readers, detective fiction promises disruption followed by the restoration of order in societies marked by disillusionment and hopes for a better future.

This book focuses on examples of detective fiction from Cuba and Mexico during or after periods of profound social turbulence (the Special Period and the War on Drugs). It offers an analysis of representations of sexualities, bodies, and the detective genre itself. Through close readings of detective novels by Leonardo Padura and Amir Valle from Cuba, and Bef and Rogelio Guedea from Mexico, the study explores increasingly fluid sexualities and bodies across ten challenging examples of metaphysical detective fiction. It argues that this subgenre generates deep reader anxiety by challenging genre structures and boundaries, provoking questions about truth and falsehood, good and evil—concerns that mirror periods of intense social disruption in both Cuba and Mexico.