Equipo
Stella Villarmea, Lead
Professor (Full) of Philosophy at Complutense University of Madrid, and Associate Faculty Member in Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
She is a main contributor to the emergent field of the philosophy of birth. As a Marie S. Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford, she led the research project, ‘Controversies in childbirth: from epistemology to practices (VOICEs)’, funded by the European Commission (2018-20). As the principal investigator of the project ‘Philosophy of Birth: Rethinking the Origin from Medical (PHILBIRTH-1)’, funded by the Ministry of Economy in Spain, she coordinated an interdisciplinary team of philosophers, health practitioners and social scientists around childbirth and birth care (2016-19). She currently leads a Programme of Excellence on the Philosophy of Birth (PHILBIRTH-2), funded by the Government of Madrid (2021-23).
With an expertise in epistemology and feminism, her works address the philosophical relation between knowledge and emancipation. She has published on conceptual innovation and scepticism, as well as on Wittgenstein, Kant, and Levinas.
Member of the Steering and Gender Committees of the International Federation of Philosophical Associations (FISP), she has been Speaker of the International Association of Women Philosophers (IAPH) and Board member of the Spanish Network for Philosophy (REF).
Invited professor at the universities of Humboldt, Paderborn, Lund, Marie S. Curie, and Kent, Villarmea has worked as Adjunct Professor at the University of Saint Louis-Madrid. She has done long research stays at the universities of Oxford, California-Santa Barbara, and Notre Dame (EEUU).
Villarmea´s outreach activity tends to focus on the educational and health sectors.
UCM Profile
Oxford Profile
Academia Profile
The Philosophy of Birth Network, The Centre for Values-based Practice, University of Oxford
Contact: svillarm@ucm.es
Anna Argirò
Anna Argirò holds a PhD from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University London (2025). Her research interests include Post-Kantian European philosophy, Hannah Arendt and feminist theory, with a focus on the issues of birth and maternity. She is currently a Postdoctoral Visiting Researcher in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid and a member of the Philosophy of Birth Network based at St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Anna is writing a monograph on Hannah Arendt’s notion of natality. Her work contributes to an emergent revaluation of maternity as a site of political, existential, and symbolic significance. She challenges the divide between the biological and the political by reorienting philosophical conceptions of origin toward embodied and relational beginnings. She aims to give a plural account of maternity by bringing into dialogue diverse feminist traditions, including decolonial and Black feminist perspectives.
Anna Argiró is also a research fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies at the University of Verona and was a visiting scholar at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, New York in 2022. Her research obtained funding from La Sapienza - University of Rome, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the UK Turing Scheme. She is co-founder of the Visceral Bodies research network and guest editor of the peer-reviewed journal Studies in the Maternal. She participated in numerous academic conferences in Europe and the US, and organised academic events at Kingston University and Birbeck College, London.
Contact: annargiro@gmail.com; annaargi@ucm.es
Website and publications: https://ucm.academia.edu/AnnaArgir%C3%B2
Rebeca Granero Ferrer
Rebeca Granero Ferrer is a graduate in Midwifery of the City University of London (2016). She has worked as a midwife for the NHS in the UK, and for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in humanitarian settings in Bangladesh and Central African Republic. She currently works as an independent midwife in Spain.
She is a PhD candidate in Gender Studies at the University of Valencia. Her dissertation takes a philosophical approach to birth to explore the epistemic injustice that women face during childbirth, with a particular emphasis on the implicit associations that discredit women in labour as subjects of knowledge. She holds a Master in Human Rights, Democracy and International Justice (University of Valencia, 2020), and a Master in Gender, Sexuality and Society (Birkbeck College, University of London, 2018).
Contact: rebeca.graneroferrer@gmail.com
Marina Acero
Marina Acero is currently an Invited Investigator and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, under the guidance of Prof Stella Villarmea. She actively contributes to the research projects 'Philosophy of Birth' and 'BioKoinos’, among others.
Her primary focus is on understanding how we, from a Western cultural perspective, conceptualize the pregnant body and its relation to recognition problem and intersubjectivity processes. Therefore, her areas of interest include the philosophy of birth and reproduction, intersubjectivity and identity, perinatal and mental health, as well as aesthetic, literary, and cinematic expressions related to reproduction and birth.
In 2020, she obtained 'Severo Ochoa'; PhD fellowship at the University of Oviedo to complete her doctoral thesis: 'On Monsters, Mothers, and Chimeras: Abjection, Vulnerability, and Resistance. Towards a Philosophy of Reproduction'. She taught at the same university and did research stays at the Praxis Research Group, CFUL (University of Lisbon), and ITRALI (University of Guadalajara).
In 2016, she received a CONACYT scholarship to pursue a Master's in Social Anthropology at CIESAS-Sureste. She investigated on suicide narratives within indigenous populations and explored self-management and mutual support groups in mental health. She started to think about the link between mental health, attachment and birth, following studies about traditional midwifery. She graduated in Philosophy (UNED, 2015), where she was recognized with the Faculty of Philosophy's Academic Excellence Award. Thanks to the Santander Universities scholarship, she explored decolonial and intercultural studies during a research stay at the University Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo.
Contact: marinasacero@gmail.com / caracero@ucm.es
Bruna Fani Duarte Rocha
Bruna Fani Duarte Rocha is currently an Invited Investigator and PhD Researcher in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, under the guidance of Professor Stella Villarmea. She actively contributes to the research projects 'Philosophy of Birth' and 'BioKoinos.’
Through her studies and research, she aims to foster a dialogue between two fields of knowledge, Philosophy and Anthropology, focusing on the Philosophy of birth and motherhood and their intercultural translations in European and Latin American contexts. Her primary focus is to understand the politicization process of motherhood in the contemporary construction of activism against obstetric violence, through the political action of the civil association El Parto es Nuestro.
She obtained the scholarship PRINT/CAPES from the Brazilian Government to do research at Complutense University of Madrid with the project, "Maternity and Feminism: an ethnography about the association El Parto es Nuestro from Madrid, Spain." In 2022, she received an Honorable Mention award in the Human Rights category from the Brazilian Anthropology Association for the paper, "PARTO, VIOLÊNCIA OBSTÉTRICA E EMOÇÕES: O (RE)CONHECIMENTO DA DOR NO COTIDIANO DE MÃES ENLUTADAS E DE 'MÃES ESPECIAIS," published by the association editor.
In 2019, she received a CAPES scholarship to pursue a Master's in Social Sciences at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM). She investigated experiences of obstetric violence within social movements and explored the relationship between emotions and politics. She began to consider the link between emotions and political practices, pregnancy and birth, following studies on obstetric violence. She graduated in Humanities (Letras) at UFSM in 2015, with a government scholarship.
Contact: faniduartee@gmail.com / brduarte@ucm.es
Elena Ceccarelli
Elena Ceccarelli is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanistic and International Studies at the University of Urbino, Italy. She holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pisa, where her thesis focused on obstetric violence in Italy. Her research examined epistemic injustice and recognition theory in relation to the first Italian social media campaign addressing this issue. Her current doctoral project explores online controversies among mothers—commonly referred to as the "mommy wars"—and how these digital disputes shape and negotiate normative conceptions of motherhood and care from a gendered perspective. She also investigates Italian activism against obstetric violence, with particular attention to how epistemic injustice influences maternal knowledge and authority. More broadly, her work interrogates the tensions between empowerment, expertise, and the reproduction of neoliberal maternal norms.
Contact: e.ceccarelli8@campus.uniurb.it
Virginia Ballesteros, Team
Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid
She completed her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Valencia, with the dissertation, Conceptions of Mental Illness: in Search of Reality (2021). She holds a postgraduate degree in Therapeutic Action and its Social Repercussions (UNED, 2017) and a master's degree in Contemporary Philosophical Thought (University of Valencia, 2015). She has done a research stay at the Sapienza University of Rome and at the Institute for Philosophical Research of Lyon.
Her research focuses on the philosophy of birth — particularly, on the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of birth care. She is also interested in the philosophy of psychiatry, i.e. the metaphysical assumptions underlying the conception and treatment of mental illness and the role of altered states of consciousness in psychiatry.
She is a member of the research project, "Philosophy of Birth: a New Logos for Genos (PHILBIRTH-2)", Programme of Excellence, Complutense University of Madrid (2021-23).
Contact: viballes@ucm.es