Margaret Bullen

MARGARET BULLEN (Nedging, Suffolk, U.K., 1964) is a feminist anthropologist living in the Basque Country since 1991 and lecturing at the University of the Basque Country since 2005. After graduating in Modern Languages (French and Spanish) at the University of Bristol (1987), she went on to do a PhD at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool (1991) on cultural and social economic change amongst Andean migrants in the shanty towns of Arequipa, Peru.

Her interests in migration, identity, language and change have remained a constant, strengthened by a gendered perspective and focus on gender and symbolic systems. In recent years, her research has centred on the conflicts arising around changes proposed in different rituals across the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, with an emphasis on the polemic over the participation of women in the parades or Alardes of Hondarribia and Irun. She has also analyzed festive rituals in other localities, such as the Moor’s Parade in Antzuola or the Drum Parade or Tamborrada of Donostia-San Sebastián. Representative of this work is the co-authored book, Tristes espectáculos: las mujeres y los Alardes de Irun y Hondarribia (2003). As a member of AFIT (Feminist Anthropology Research Group) she has participated in the project Continuities, conflicts and ruptures with regard to inequality: gender relations and bodily and emotional practices amongst the Basque youth.

Bullen has a firm interest in applied anthropology and in 2002 helped found Farapi, the first Basque consultancy in this vein. She continues to collaborate with them and other entities in projects related to gender violence (Violence against women and its causes in Gipuzkoa, County Council of Gipuzkoa, 2011) and youth (The social construction of the romantic imagination amongst the Gipuzkoan youth and its influence on gender violence and health, Medicus Mundi, 2016). Another area of collaboration is the teaching and research of Basque Culture and Gender Studies with the University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC). She published Basque Gender Studies (2003) and translated into English Xamar’s Orhipean; The Country of Basque (2006).

PUBLICATIONS:

BULLEN, Margaret, Lidia Montesinos, Begoña Pecharromán (2021) “Emakumeek Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoko tokiko jaietan parte hartzeko estrategiak” /  “Estrategias para la participación de las mujeres en las fiestas locales de la Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco”, Vitoria/Gasteiz: Emakunde .

BULLEN, Margaret & PEREZ GALAN, Beatriz (2020) “Desde la reivindicación de la participación a la incorporación del Género en el patrimonio cultural festivo en el estado español”, en Fundación Gabeiras (coord.) Patrimonio inmaterial y desigualdades de género. Análisis y propuestas desde una perspectiva antropológica y jurídica), La Cultivada, pp. 10-57.

Con Anaitze Agirre Larreta [et al.] (2020) Ez Donk Oraindik y Corps-Exquis: una comunidad feminista en tiempos de virus, en Marina Garcés y Antonio Casado da Rocha (eds.): Debate: Comunidades de práctica y el futuro de la educación, Dilemata, Revista Internacional de Éticas Aplicadas, nº 33, pp. 95-115.

BULLEN, Margaret (UPV/EHU), Medicus Mundi Gipuzkoa, Farapi Coop (2018) ¿El amor es algo bonito que se controla online? La gestión virtual de las relaciones en la adolescencia vasca y peruana / Online kontrolatzen den gauza ederra ote da maitasuna? Euskal eta perutar nerabeak harremanen kudeaketa birtualean” (Euskaraz laburpen bakarrik eskuragai) .

BULLEN, Margaret (2018) “Soldados, cocineros y aguadoras en la tamborrada donostiarra: Participación festiva y performance de género”, in Mari Luz Esteban and Jone Miren Hernández Garcia (coord.) Etnografías feministas. Una mirada al siglo XXI desde la antropología vasca, pp. 61-83

BULLEN Margaret (2017) “La antropología feminista: Aportaciones conceptuales para una epistemología participativa”, in Jone Martinez Palacios (ed.) Participar desde los feminismos: Ausencias, expulsiones y resistencias, Barcelona: Icaria,  pp. 29-63.

BULLEN Margaret (2017) “Genero-sistema eta jaiak: begirada antropologiko bat Euskal Herriko errealitateari”, in Miren Guilló Arakistain (coord.) Festak, genero-harremanak eta feminismoa. Begirada teoriko eta antropologikoak, praktika sortzaileak eta plzaeraren kudeaketa kolektiboak, Bilbo: Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea, pp. 35-54.

BULLEN, Margaret (2017) “¿Puede hablar de feminismo decolonial una antropóloga feminista blanca?”, SOS Racismo/SOS Arrazakeria (coord.) Islamofobia y Género,  pp. 102-111.   

HERNÁNDEZ GARCIA, Jone Miren & BULLEN, Margaret  (2017) “Cracks in the Wall: Breaking Down the Myths of Egalitarianism and Matriarchy in the Basque Country”, in Xabier Arregi Gordoa and Andreas Hess (eds.) The Basque Moment: Egalitarianism and Traditional Basque Society, Occasional Papers Series No. 27, Center for Basque Studies, University of Reno, Nevada, pp.157-189.

BULLEN, Margaret (UPV/EHU), Medicus Mundi Gipuzkoa, Farapi Coop. (2016) Gaizki amaitzen den gauza ederra ote da maitasuna? Amodioa, sexua eta osasuna. Gipuzkoako nerabe eta gazteek maitasunari buruz dituzten ideiak / ¿El amor es algo bonito que acaba mal? Amor, sexo y salud. El ideario amoroso entre adolescentes y jóvenes en Gipuzkoa.

BULLEN, Margaret (2015) “Doing Anthropology in Public: Examples from the Basque Country”, in Simone Abram and Sarah Pink (eds.) Media, Anthropology and Public Engagement, Oxford: Berghan Books, pp. 25-43.