Anthropologist from Guipuzcoa, born in San Sebastian on April 1, 1937 and died on April 8, 2025.
Professor and director of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of the Basque Country (1988), in the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of San Sebastian.
She has developed her research in the Basque Country, Micronesia, Hawaii, Mexico and North America.
Bachelor of Arts (St. Mary College, 1966); Master of Arts (Anthropology) from the University of Hawaii, 1974; Diploma in Cultural Analysis Methods (East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1978); Degree (University of Barcelona, 1980) and PhD (UPV/EHU, 1981) in Geography and History; PhD in Anthropology (University of Hawaii, 1978).
She has taught at the universities of Guam (“Instructor”, ‘Researcher’, 1971-72), Princeton (“Visiting Felow”, 1986) and at the Basque Studies Program of the University of Nevada-Reno (1985-91).
On his return from the United States in 1979 he began his teaching and research experience at the University of the Basque Country. In that year Social Anthropology did not yet exist at the UPV-EHU and he was the first person hired to teach this subject. In 1984 she taught the first PhD course in the field of feminist anthropology under the title “Differentiation and sexual hierarchization” in the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences. In 1988 she obtained the first chair of Social Anthropology at the UPV-EHU.
Teaching and research have gone hand in hand in her academic career and both the topics she has dealt with and the theoretical orientations include Social Anthropology and an interest in the advancement of the and methodologies of Feminist Anthropology. The topics dealt with have to do with space and time; property s and kinship strategies; ethnicity and rituals; the incidence of new socializations for structures and parity relations; theorization on power women and men and its practical implications.
She has been director of the Women's Studies Seminar (1980-85 and 1992-94). She has taught doctoral courses, courses and conferences at the universities of the Basque Country, Santiago de Compostela, Autónoma de Barcelona, La Laguna, Universidad Internacional Menéndez-Pelayo and Málaga, as well as at the American universities of Princeton and Cornell. Also at the University of Zaragoza and in different Basque cultural centers, on the areas of his specialty.
He has presented papers, mainly on Basque anthropology, at symposiums and congresses in Deusto (1980), I Didactic Conference of the Institución Príncipe de Viana (Pamplona, 1981), Conference of the “Société d'Antropologie” of Bordeaux (1983), III Congress of Anthropology of Donostia (1985), symposium “Gypsies and other minorities in Spain” (Gypsy Studies Society, New York, 1986), “Women in Anthropology” (Sacramento, California, 1986), LXXX Annual Meeting of the “American Anthropological Association” (Philadelphia, 1986), “Encontre d'antropologia i diversitat hispanica” organized by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1987), V Congress of Anthropology of the Spanish State (Granada, 1990), International Colloquium on Regions and Identities (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1992), International Congress A Periferia Atlantica de Europa (Santiago de Compostela, 1992), International Congress Research, Teaching and Feminism (Donostia, 1993), Congress of the “European Society for Oceanists” (Basel, 1994), among others. She has also been President of the XI Congress of Anthropology of the Federation of Associations of the Spanish State (Donostia, 2009) and President of the XVII International Congress of Basque Studies (Vitoria, 2008).
1967 and 1976 she carried out field and archival work (Madrid, Seville) on the Mariana and Caroline Islands, as well as several studies for the University of Guam. In 1980-81 he directed the research team on “Social organization and property in the village of Arrankudiaga” (EI/SEV). Member of the “Equipe Franco-Iberique de Recherches en Sciences Sociales” of the “Institut Universitaire Scientifique” of the CNRS in Paris, directed by Pierre Bidart (1985). 1986 and 1988 she carried out fieldwork on gender in San Sebastian and Bilbao, with a grant from the Seminar of Women's Studies of the City Council of San Sebastian.
Commissioned by the UPV/EHU, she has carried out research on “Construction of generic identities in the urban framework” (1991), “New Anthropological Proposals for the study of space from Social Anthropology” (1992) and, in 1990, “Gender constructions in intracultural comparison” (line of research with 4 theses attached). In 1994 she began the work, also commissioned by the UPV, "Processes of change in Basque society and culture. Axes and articulations of gender s and relations".
Coordinator of the Basque Country project within the research programme the French CNRS and the MEC on ‘La Construction Sociale des sexualités en Europe du Sud’ (1993-94).
1981 and 1983 she received the José Miguel de Barandiarán Scholarship from EI/SEV, the first one awarded for ethnographic work, for ‘Comparative study of the behaviour and values of Basque women in coastal, rural and urban areas’.
Director of the Cuadernos de Antropología collection of the Anthropos publishing house in Barcelona (1981-1995), coordinator of the week on ‘Women, Culture and Society’ organised in 1983 by the Women's Studies Seminar of the UPV/EHU. Director of the Anthropology course at the 1st UPV Summer Courses (1983); co-director of the Ethnicity course at the 2nd courses (1984). Secretary of the Third Anthropology Congress (UPV, San Sebastian, 1984). Coordinator of the ‘Anthropology of Women’ symposium at the IV Anthropology Congress (Alicante, 1987). Member of the editorial boards of Kobie and Eres; American Anthropological Association (1976), Basque Studies Society (1978), founding member of ANKULEGI (Basque Anthropology Association) and AUDEM (University Association for Women's Studies) in 1993. Vice-President of EASA (European Association of Social Anthropology). Member of the State Commission that drew up the 1988 syllabus for the Bachelor's Degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology.
Her published works include Mujer vasca. Imagen y realidad (director), 1985; Korrika rituales de la lengua en el espacio, 1988; Culturas oceánicas: Micronesia, 1987; Las mujeres en la ciudad. An applied study of Donostia, 1991; Gender and sexuality (with Carmela Sanz Rueda, 1991; Korrika Basque ritual for Ethnic Identity, 1993; Gendered Anthropology (ed.), 1993. Scaffolding for a New City. Lecturas desde la antropología, (1997). He has also published numerous works on his speciality in journals such as South Pacific Bulletin, Micronesica, Guam Recorder, Ethnica, Boletín de la Société d'Antropologie du Sud-Ouest, Lurralde, Langaiak, Cuadernos de Sección de Eusko Ikaskuntza, Kobie. Antropología Cultural, Gendered Anthropology or Aiurri. These articles analyse social and cultural life from an anthropological point of view and with a feminist perspective. Some of the topics dealt with are related to power and inequalities men and women, to work-life balance and its difficulties, to male violence or to the change of values.
It is worth mentioning her role as a mentor, having supervised theses and dissertations, final research projects for Master's degrees and Advanced Studies Diplomas. She has supervised researchers who have spent time at the UPV-EHU under her guidance. And he has promoted a significant number of team projects. Together with Jone Miren Hernández, he promoted the ANDRESARE website in 2008. And she supported the newspaper ANDRA, created in 2000 as the ‘first women's newspaper in the Basque Country’.
Teresa del Valle has been awarded the Emakunde Prize for Equality 2010 for her research and dissemination work on the reality of women's issues in Spain.
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