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Belen Garcia Gavilanes
(she/her)
Teams and roles for Belen Garcia Gavilanes
Research Student/Graduate Tutor
Research student
Overview
I am a fully funded ESRC PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations, and recipient of an overseas fieldwork grant. My research focuses on girls' everyday politics in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. I am particularly interested in how the mundane becomes political in contexts where girls face multiple intersecting expectations and social barriers. I am analysing a rich 18-year longitudinal qualitative study, complemented by my own focus groups and interviews.
My interdisciplinary background spans development, communications and sociology. I have over five years of professional experience, primarily in third-sector organisations focused on gender equality and biodiversity conservation. I am currently a Graduate Tutor at the School of Law and Politics, teaching Gender, Sex and Death in Global Politics (second year) and Introduction to Political Science (first year).
Publication
2026
- Garcia Gavilanes, B. E. et al. 2026. ‘My parents don’t want to tell me such things’: Girls’ calls for greater intergenerational dialogue on sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing. Journal of Dialogue Studies
2025
- Walters, R. et al. 2025. Girls' everyday resistance: findings from real choices real lives. Technical Report.
Articles
- Garcia Gavilanes, B. E. et al. 2026. ‘My parents don’t want to tell me such things’: Girls’ calls for greater intergenerational dialogue on sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing. Journal of Dialogue Studies
Monographs
- Walters, R. et al. 2025. Girls' everyday resistance: findings from real choices real lives. Technical Report.
Research
My research sits at the intersection of gender, development and international relations. This is a collaborative project between Cardiff University and the NGO Plan International, with the aim of understanding how girls engage with everyday politics throughout their lives. Plan International has conducted interviews with girls and their caregivers over 18 years across nine different countries, including El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
My central interest is understanding the ways girls' experiences become political within their own communities. I argue that research on girlhood still contains gaps across particular contexts, such as Latin America and the Caribbean, and low-income settings more broadly. While childhood and girlhood have received considerable academic attention, there is more to understand about how girls in these contexts make sense of their lives and navigate the challenges they face. My current work is particularly focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and what these mean for girls in practice.
I aim both to contribute to filling this gap in the literature and to inform practical outcomes for the organisations and institutions that work with girls in these contexts.
Biography
- MSc Social Science Research Methods (Sociology) at Cardiff University (2023)
- MSc Media, Communications and Development at London School of Economics and Political Science (2018)
- BA Communications at Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (2015)