University of St Andrews

Dr Paloma Gay y Blasco

Senior Lecturer

Profile

I have worked with Spanish Gitanos (Gypsies/Roma) and on international adoption, and have published on gender and sex, memory and forgetting, community-making, Pentecostalism and the internet. My first monograph, 'Gypsies in Madrid: Sex, Gender and the Performance of Identity' was published in 1999 (Berg). I am also interested in the role of ethnographic writing in anthropology, and with Huon Wardle I published 'How to Read Ethnography' in 2007 (Routledge). I am now in the process of writing an experimental ethnography/biography with Liria de la Cruz, a long-term Gitano informant and close friend. As a preamble to this project we have published the article 'Friendship, Anthropology' in the journal Anthropology and Humanism (2012, vol. 37) where we argue for a collaborative and egalitarian ethnography. I am happy to supervise PhD students on issues to do with Gypsies/Roma, kinship, gender, feminist anthropology, and Southern Europe.

See also the PURE research profile.

Academic qualifications

BA MA PhD PGCHET

Selected publications

Authored volumes:

1999. Gypsies in Madrid: Sex, Gender and the Performance of Identity. Oxford and New York. Berg.

2006.  P Gay y Blasco and H Wardle. How to Read Ethnography. Routledge. London and New York.

Edited collection:

2008. P Gay y Blasco and D Iordanova (eds.). Picturing Gypsies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Roma Representation. Special Issue of Third Text, Vol. 23, no. 3. London and New York. Routledge.

 

Articles in International Refereed Journals:

1997. A 'Different' Body? Desire and Virginity among Gitanos. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 517-535.

2000.The Politics of Evangelism: Hierarchy, Masculinity and Religious Conversion Among Gitanos. Romani Studies, series 5, vol. 10, issue1, pp. 1-22.

2001. ‘We Don’t Know Our Descent’: How the Gitanos of Jarana Manage the Past. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 631-647.

2002. Gypsy/Roma Diasporas: Introducing a Comparative Perspective. Social Anthropology, the Journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 173-188.

2008. La Feminité Gitane Dans le Contexte de la Fragmentation Politique Dans l’Espagne du XXe Siecle. Etudes Tsiganes, vol. 33-34, pp. 140-162.2010. The Fragility of Cosmopolitanism: A Biographical Approach. Social Anthropology, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 403-409.

2011. Agata's Story: Singular Lives and the Reach of the 'Gitano Law'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 17,no  3, p. 445-461.

2011. Grenzüberschreitungen.: Eine biographische Annäherung. Behemoth: a Journal of Civilization, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 7-17.

2011. Huon Wardle and Paloma Gay y Blasco. Ethnography and An Ethnography in the Human Conversation. Anthropologica, vol. 53, p. 117-127.

2012. (Paloma Gay y Blasco and Liria de la Cruz). Friendship, Anthropology. Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 37, no. 1, 1-14.

2012. Gender and Pentecostalism Among the Gitanos of Madrid: Combining Approaches. Romani Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, p. 1-18.

2012. 'A Wondrous Adventure': Mutuality and Individuality in Internet Adoption Narratives. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 18, p. 330-348.

 Articles in Edited Collections:

2003. ‘This Is Not a Place for Civilised People’: Isolation, Enforced Education and Resistance Among Spanish Gypsies. In A. Bashford and C. Strange (eds.), Isolation: Practices and Places of Exclusion. New York. Routledge. Pages 209-221.

2004. Evangelical Transformations of Forgetting and Remembering. In F D Kaneff, H Haulkanis and F Pine (eds.), Politics, Religion and Memory: the Past Meets the Present in Contemporary Europe. Hamburg and London. Lit Verlag. Pp. 255-272.

2004. Love, Suffering and Grief among Spanish Gypsies. In K Milton and M Svasek (eds.). Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feeling. Oxford and New York. Berg. Pp. 163-178.

2004. Gitano Evangelism: the Emergence of a Politico-Religious Diaspora. E. Vertovec (ed.), ESRC Transnational Communities Program Working Papers. Available online at:

http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working_papers.htm

2006. Cubo Bueno - Cubo Malo: Pureza y Contaminación Gitanas (Good Bucket – Bad Bucket: Gitano Purity and Pollution). In Csaba Pronai (ed.) Cigany Vilagok Europaban. Budapest. Nyitott Konyvmuhely Kiado. Pp. 235-246.

2007. Romské Diaspory: Komparativní Perspektiva (Roma Diaspora: A Comparative Perspective). In L Budilová and M Jakoubek (eds.), Cigánská/Romská Rodina, Píbuzenství a Sociální Organizace (Gypsy/Roma Family, Kinship and Social Organization). Pilsen. University of West Bohemia.

2008. The Roma Imagined: Representation, Authorship and Effect. In Paloma Gay y Blasco and Dina Iordanova (eds.), Picturing Gypsies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Roma Representation. Special Issue of Third Text Vol. 23, no. 3. 

Research interests

Gypsies/Roma, feminist anthropology, gender, kinship, adoption, ethnography

Research students

Jan Grill, Daniela Castellanos, Máire Ní Mhórdha, Adom Philogene Heron, Robin Irvine and Raluca Roman

Teaching

SA3061: Reading Ethnography

I teach two honours modules on alternate years, SA3061 Reading Ethnography, and SA3057 Sex and Gender.

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