Ana Ballesteros

Ramón y Cajal postdoctoral researcher at University of Coruña, sociologist and political scientist, Ana Ballesteros Pena was a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher (UNA4CAREER-COFUND) where she led the GEIPP research project Gender Equality and Intersectionality in prison policies: a multi-governed analysis (2023-2025). Previously, she received a postdoctoral Talento grant from the Comunidad de Madrid at the same university. Between 2018 and 2021 she was a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at the Universidade da Coruña and at the University of Toronto with the project “Governmigration” (Governing irregular immigration through detention: discourses and practices from an interdisciplinary approach) which analyses migrant detention systems in Canada and Spain. Her thesis (2017, University of Barcelona) analysed women’s imprisonment in the Spanish prison system with a particular focus on gender equality policies and new prison programmes. She is part of the research group Ecrim, the International Border Criminologies Network and associate researcher of the group Direitos, Políticas e Justiça, RG2 Cidadania, Trabalho e Tecnologia, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-UNOVA). She has published in Punishment and Society, Theoretical Criminology, European Journal of Politics and Gender and Women’s Studies International Forum, among others. She has also carried out research stays at Oxford University and the University of Toronto. Her research interests are punishment and social control; migration and border control; prisons and migrant detention; and feminist political analysis of prison and immigration detention policies. She has been a consultant for the European Union and international organisations such as the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB) on projects on gender and prison systems. She has also participated in contracts with Spanish administrations (Institut Catalá de les Dones, Catalonia; Madrid City Council, etc.) on gender equality and gender violence.