Ana Ballesteros

Ana Ballesteros Pena, PhD is a sociologist and a political scientist. She is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of A Coruña (Spain). Her current research analyzes immigration detention systems in Canada and Spain, specifically focusing on the post-detention period and the alternatives to detention. Her PhD (2017, University of Barcelona, Spain) examined female incarceration in the Spanish penitentiary system with a particular attention to gender equality policies and new prison programs. She is member of Ecrim Research Group, Border Criminologies international network and Associate Researcher to the research team on Rights, Policy and Justice, RG2: Citizenship, Work and Technology, CICS.NOVA, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-UNOVA). She has been visiting researcher at Oxford University and the University of Toronto. She has published in Punishment and Society and Critical Criminology, among others. Her research interests are punishment and social control; gender, migration and border control; prisons and immigration detention; and the feminist policy analysis of penitentiary and immigration detention policies. She has been a consultant for the European Union and international organizations such as the Conference of Ministers of Justice of Ibero-American Countries (COMJIB) on projects related to 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-based violence.