People
Stella Villarmea
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.
Academia Profile
Oxford Profile
Values-based Practice Profile
Contact: svillarm@ucm.es
Virginia Ballesteros
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