A brief professional Bio
Ph.D in Pedagogy, Associate Professor at the Department of Theory and History of Education at the University of Malaga, Spain and member of the Educational Theory and Social Education Research Group (Andalusian Government, Spain). I have collaborated with the Comparative and International Education Society - SIG 'Inclusive Education' (United States) and with different universities in Latin America. I am currently a member of the Scientific Committee in the Education Area of the Ibero-American Federation of Down Syndrome. My research interests lie in inclusive education, fundamentally, the social nature of disability (Disability Studies), disadvantage and sociocultural processes of exclusion. Through Ethnographic Research, I examine identity construction and educational experience, and use Action Research as a means to bring about transformation.
Last research interests
Resistance sociological and educational theories have emerged in the last years in the field of Disability Studies. I am trying to make a systematic analyses of the discrimination that students with disabilities suffer as a result of diagnostics and other school practices, seen through the lens of resistance. It provides clear evidence of the usefulness of these theories to understand this reality, and builds actions to oppose hegemonic representations of disability. When the family context resists the school's verdicts, students with cognitive disabilities can develop new social cartographies and avenues of life. I have written to show it from a practical perspective.
People with cognitive disabilities are still discriminated against in schools, and when this is the case, they are doomed to failure and exclusion. I try to show how families can help schools to be inclusive by promoting and strengthening the educational rights of people with disabilities. Families often take the advice of professionals, but if they resist by making arguments on an educational basis, students with disabilities can improve. I have studied how scientific knowledge can be used to understand informal attitudes, feelings and actions from people with disabilities and their families and to make them more resistant.
Awards
I have obtained some academic recognitions, like an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Awards for Qualitative Book in Spanish or Portuguese (by the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois) and the Disability and Human Rights 2013–14 Award (by the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities, Madrid).