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Dr Margarita Palacios

Positions held:
  • Reader in Social Theory and Psychosocial Studies, School of Social Sciences
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  • Research

    Research

    Research overview

    My current research focuses on the intersection between aesthetics and the geo-political; the study of affect, desire, materiality and processes of de-materialization; racialisation, feminization and 'white innocence'; memory, memorialisation and possibilities of witnessing.

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    8

    Current doctoral researchers

    • LUCIA SARMIENTO
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • AMA JOSEPHINE BUDGE JOHNSTONE
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Sensual Strategies for Black, Queer Resistance in Climate Changed Futures
    • CARLO PALOMBO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Nudity And Disorder: Adventures in Posthumanist Freedom
    • DANIELA LARRAIN SALAS
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      CRIMINAL SUBJECTIVITIES IN THE CHILEAN JUSTICE SYSTEM. Analysis of judicial statements of military personnel accused of violence during the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1989)
    • HANNAH REEVES
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Lessons from Crossbones Graveyard: a more-than-individuated ethics of care for place, community and ecology
      Description:

      This project offers an extended auto/ethnographic engagement with Crossbones Graveyard, Southwark. At this unique site, an ethics of care for the dead is materialised as the material-ecological (nature)culture of the garden: as frayed ribbons, weathered paintwork, and weeds bursting through cracks in the concrete. As Crossbones Graveyard undergoes a period of transition to an “enhanced” memorial, this work seeks to testify to a site that will be profoundly altered through that process. It asks: which Crossbones are “we” fighting for and what does it mean to lose or keep it? Who and what is part of this more-than-human “we” and how are we differentially imbricated in the burial ground’s continued protection?

    • SERGIO CALDERON HARKER
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Rehearsals of refusal: thinking through border refusals accross the European detention regime

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • GUSTAVO SANCHEZ MUNOZ
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, to
      Title of thesis:
      Fantasies of Critique: A Study of the Unconscious Economy of the Chilean Estallido
      Description:

      My study attempts to explore the subjective impacts of the Chile 2019 social outbreak (known as Estallido) upon the practice of local critical academics.

      The Estallido was, to a large extent, the pinnacle of a whole decade signalled by a cycle of historic protests which began in 2011. Perhaps the most salient feature of the Chilean unrest is that it lacked a concrete demand. Many local commentators agree that the Estallido was less defined by identities than by a visceral reaction to oppression. The combination of both the magnitude of the event and its all-encompassing scope has been identified as an opportunity to radically change the living conditions of the Chilean population in a post-neoliberal direction.

      For decades, finding ways for movements in such a direction has been the aim of Chilean scholars with an emancipatory commitment. Academically, this commitment is customarily expressed in terms of ‘critique’. Critique can be summarised as a type of knowledge production guided by the premise that the world has to become different. By deploying diverse theories, methodologies, and procedures, a large number of academics have explicitly tried to contribute to the crafting of less oppressive ways of organising society. Imagining non- or post-neoliberal social arrangements has been the most persistent goal of Chilean critical researchers in the last three decades. The Estallido, for the first time in Chile’s recent history, harbours the possibility for the achievement of such a goal.

      My study approaches the intersection between the Estallido and academic critique, but it does so from a particular, psychosocial perspective. Instead of assuming the revolt should merely broaden the critical horizons to incorporate existential aspects hitherto disregarded (which is nonetheless an important task), my research focuses on the subjective impacts the Estallido has upon those who perform, and will perform, critique in Chile. Therefore, my study will take place in different Chilean academic institutions. This emphasis on the revolt implies that critique is not an independent epistemological procedure but a situated process contingent on the very same phenomena it aims at interpreting.

      Awarded:
      2024
    • GUSTAVO SANCHEZ MUNOZ
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Fantasies of Critique: A Study of the Unconscious Economy of the Chilean Estallido
      Description:

      My study attempts to explore the subjective impacts of the Chile 2019 social outbreak (known as Estallido) upon the practice of local critical academics.

      The Estallido was, to a large extent, the pinnacle of a whole decade signalled by a cycle of historic protests which began in 2011. Perhaps the most salient feature of the Chilean unrest is that it lacked a concrete demand. Many local commentators agree that the Estallido was less defined by identities than by a visceral reaction to oppression. The combination of both the magnitude of the event and its all-encompassing scope has been identified as an opportunity to radically change the living conditions of the Chilean population in a post-neoliberal direction.

      For decades, finding ways for movements in such a direction has been the aim of Chilean scholars with an emancipatory commitment. Academically, this commitment is customarily expressed in terms of ‘critique’. Critique can be summarised as a type of knowledge production guided by the premise that the world has to become different. By deploying diverse theories, methodologies, and procedures, a large number of academics have explicitly tried to contribute to the crafting of less oppressive ways of organising society. Imagining non- or post-neoliberal social arrangements has been the most persistent goal of Chilean critical researchers in the last three decades. The Estallido, for the first time in Chile’s recent history, harbours the possibility for the achievement of such a goal.

      My study approaches the intersection between the Estallido and academic critique, but it does so from a particular, psychosocial perspective. Instead of assuming the revolt should merely broaden the critical horizons to incorporate existential aspects hitherto disregarded (which is nonetheless an important task), my research focuses on the subjective impacts the Estallido has upon those who perform, and will perform, critique in Chile. Therefore, my study will take place in different Chilean academic institutions. This emphasis on the revolt implies that critique is not an independent epistemological procedure but a situated process contingent on the very same phenomena it aims at interpreting.

      Awarded:
      2024

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Texts and Interpretation (PSSL039S7)
    • Social Theory (SSPA159S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Review

    Book Section