Mª Angeles Durán

Distinguished representant of social researchers’ generation who joined the academic life during the 1960s, she graduated in Political and Economic Sciences in University of Madrid. After obtaining her doctorate cum laude, she continued her specialization at Institute for Social Research (University of Michigan) awarded by Fulbright Commission. She has been researcher in Cambridge, Río de Janeiro (PUC) and Washington (Seattle) universities, in Florence European Institute and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She has given conferences and collaborated in researches and academic activities in more than 200 institutions in Europe, America Latina, United States, Canada, Morocco, Australia and Japan. Since she began her academic career her work has had a noticeable international projection, both in the Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon scope as with researchers and entities of America Latina.

She was the first woman to obtain in Spain a Sociology professorship, she has been FES president and member of the executive committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA). Founder of Instituto Universitario de Estudios de la Mujer in Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, nowadays she is ad honorem teacher of the CSIC (Human and Social Sciences Center) and honorific president of UNESCO Chair of Equality Policies of UAM. 

From her international work, we can highlight the permanent effort to open new research areas, making visible women’s contribution to society showing the interdependence between private and public life, as well as sociology and economy, as their studies about unpaid work, the social situation of women, care of dependent and long-term patients, and inequality in the use of time. Have been pioneer contributions as her research has been about the creation and experience of the city from gender perspective.

She was awarded with Premio Nacional de Investigación en Ciencias Jurídicas, Sociales y Económicas Pascual Madoz and doctor honoris causa by Universidad de Granada. Author of an extensive written work, among her books stand out: El trabajo no remunerado en la economía global (2012), Los costes invisibles de la enfermedad (2003); Si Aristóteles levantara la cabeza: quince ensayos sobre las ciencias y las letras (2003), Mujeres y hombres en la formación de la Teoría Sociológica (1996), La ciudad compartida (1992), De puertas adentro (1988), Liberación y Utopía: la mujer ante la ciencia (1982). Her autobiographical book Diario de batalla (2003) was distinguished by a Fundación para la Educación Pública y Formación Oncológica Continuada for considering it a valued contribution to the understanding of the social and personal cancer consequences.

She has participated in different scientific conferences and activities organised by patients’ associations and health experts. During the last decade she has increased her presence in Latin America, participated in seminars and teaching courses with the aim of promoting innovations in research that make visible women’s and un paid workers contributions to social wellbeing.

Inmaculada Zambrano Álvarez, Sociology Department, Universidad Pablo de Olavide.