Lidia Mateo Leivas

Lidia Mateo Leivas works as a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Art History at UNED. Her work intersects Memory Studies and Visual Culture, where she combines feminist and ecosocial thought, art history, cultural studies, the politics of the gaze, the study of emotions, and the anthropology of images.

She holds a PhD in Artistic, Literary, and Cultural Studies from UAM and CSIC, and has conducted research stays at the University of Buenos Aires, New York University, and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She has curated exhibitions at the Museo Reina Sofía and CSIC, as well as at Matadero-Madrid as a member of the Asociación Memorias en Red. She has also worked as a researcher in the Department of Temporary Exhibitions at the Museo Reina Sofía and as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. Additionally, she has developed community-based projects to facilitate the circulation of memories and knowledge, is active in several collectives, and has taught courses, seminars, and given lectures at cultural centers like the Born in Barcelona or the Museo de la Paz in Guernica, and at universities such as Princeton or the Pontifícia de São Paulo.

In addition to contributing occasionally to fanzines and other platforms, she has published articles in journals such as Visual Studies, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, and Memory Studies. She is also the author of two monographs: El reverso de la censura. Cine clandestino durante el tardofranquismo y la Transición (Cendeac 2020) and Imaginarios de la clandestinidad. Complicidad, memoria y emoción en nueve tramas (Akal 2022).

She is interested in creating meeting points between the academic world and everyday life, between theoretical thought and political action.