Isabel de Blas Buruaga
Isabel de Blas Buruaga holds a degree in Political Science and Sociology (University of Deusto, 1997) and a Diploma in Higher Education, Humanities Combined (University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, 1999), with Honors. After completing this academic stage, she developed her professional career between 2000 and 2018 as a sociologist in various institutions, cooperatives, and associations. She has worked as coordinator of the municipal agreement for the normalization of the Basque language and as a consultant on quality management and communication-relations issues.
She has also worked as a social consultant, preparing social inclusion guides and systematizing social and labor inclusion experiences from a gender perspective, with people from groups at risk of social exclusion (women from ethnic minority community contexts, unemployed women over 45, and underage migrants). She has carried out consultancy work for several organizations on gender violence, feminist empowerment, and coeducation.
As an accredited trainer, she has worked as a professional instructor for Hobetuz and as a trainer for unemployed individuals through Lanbide, on topics such as citizen participation, community intervention, conflict prevention, and gender inequality. She has facilitated participatory processes together with the Participation Directorate of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. As head of equality and participation projects in a foundation within the social and health services field, she has worked from the perspective of feminist critical gerontology, coordinating and promoting the network of workshops on sexist ageism funded by Emakunde.
She has combined her professional career with academic studies, holding an Official Master’s Degree in Citizen Participation and Community Development (UPV/EHU, 2015) and the qualification of Agent for Equality between Women and Men (University of La Rioja, 2016). She has also pursued complementary training outside academia, such as communication from humanistic psychology, Master Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (2014), and Management of Social Organizations and Projects (2013).
Since 2020, she has been a lecturer at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in the Department of Sociology and Social Work. She is currently developing her PhD thesis entitled “Relational dynamics of community care initiatives” under the supervision of Matxalen Legarreta Iza, within the framework of the national project “Changing Paradigms: Practices and Discourses of Transformative Economies in a Context of Ecosocial Urgency,” in which she participates. She is also a member of the national research projects “Towards a Gender-Sensitive Curriculum in Initial Teacher Education (Simone)” and “Deinstitutionalization of Long-Term Care and Social Inclusion: Potentials, Limits, and Tensions of a Model in Transition Facing the Demographic Challenge (DESINCARE).” In addition, she participates in the UPV/EHU i3KD Lab Innovation Project “Unveiling and Managing Gender Inequalities in Sociology and Political Science.”