PhD. in Ethnic Studies with an emphasis on women, race and sexuality at the University of California at Berkeley (2000). Full Professor at the School of Humanities at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)/National Autonomous University of México (2004). Coordinator of curricular innovation from the gender, critical theory and cultural critique perspectives in Graduate Studies at the Humanities at UNAM (2010 until today). Advisor to the Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal (CDHDF)/ Commission on Human Rights of México City (2014 until today). Chair of the Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género (PUEG/UNAM) / Gender Studies Program at UNAM (2004-2013). She analyzes the relationship between critical pedagogies, artistic and juridical practices from a gender perspective to focus on women’s access to justice. She works with women in prison bridging academia towards the activation of academic knowledge from a pedagogical, artistic and juridical angle.

Director of the project Mujeres en Espiral: sistema de justicia, perspectiva de género y pedagogías en resistencia / Spiral turns: juridical system, gender perspective and pedagogies in resistance (2008 until today), an academic and activist initiative that fosters women’s access to real justice, through practices of pedagogical, juridical and artistic intervention in prison This project has produced a variety of visual, textual, and juridical material (murals in prison, fanzines, documentaries and short films, amicus curiae, benefits for women in prison, reports on violation of rights in female prisons, among others) and has created the Clinic of Public Interest Marisela Escobedo (2013), that works with specific cases of female juridical mistreatment, in order to render the gendered biased exercise of faulty justice against women visible. Currently the Clinic of Public Interest Marisela Escobedo, the juridical part of the project she directs, is working on three cases of women mistreated by the juridical system waiting to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Her teaching and research analyses the imperative of public universities participation in the solution of current social urgencies, that is to say the activation of academic knowledge for social intervention (the bridging of academia towards activism), particularly through the interaction of artistic, juridical and pedagogical practices, from a gendered perspective in women’s full access to justice.

Her work has been recognized with several awards: Omecíhuat by el Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres INMUJERES DF/ Ministry for Women in México City, for her academic, theoretical and conceptual work in favor of the development of gender studies at the university (2009); Hermila Galindo award, offered by the Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal CDHDF / México City Commission of Human Rights, for her direction of the Gender Studies Program (PUEG) at UNAM (2004-2011). First prize in the Annual Award Mujer y Publicidad / Women and Advertising (Guadalajara/ México 2009), for the campaign created by the Gender Studies Program she directed (PUEG) La Igualdad entre mujeres y hombres, nuestra manera de ser Pumas / Equity between women and men our way of belonging). In 2013 the Gender Studies Program PUEG received the award Margherita von Brentano of the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, given to the project MISEAL (Medidas para la inclusión social y equidad en Instituciones de Educación Superior en América Latina/Measures for social, racial and female inclusion to university studies, undergraduate and graduate in Latin-America) a project she directed, oriented to the social, gendered and racial inclusion in university studies- undergraduate and graduate- in Latin-America. In 2015, she was granted two first prizes (best film and best director) in the FICFUSA film festival in Colombia for the co-direction and screenplay -with Mariana X. Rivera -of the documental Nos pintamos solas/Mirrors and Walls in female prisons, a film that analyses the life of women in Mexican prisons. Most recently in 2017, the short film La/Mentada de la LLorona/Women Hollowing Cry, produced collectively by the project she directs Mujeres en Espiral/ Spiral Turns and a group of female prisoners in México City, was awarded first prize in the category of best social short film in the Short Film Festival of La Rioja Argentina.

She has published around 90 articles and essays, a quarter of them in English, and 8 books, the most important ones are: Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories (2016) in collaboration with Yolanda Martínez San-Miguel and Ben Sifuentes-Juauregui, from Rutgers University at New Jersey; Des/posesión: Género, Territorio y Luchas por la Autodeterminación / Dis/possession: Gender, Territory and the Fight for Self Determination, coedited with María Josefinda Saldaña-Portillo, from NYU in 2015; Pintar los Muros: Deshacer la Cárcel / Murals in Female Prisons (UNAM, 2014); Pedagogías en Espiral: Los giros de las teorías de género y la crítica cultura/ Spiral Pedagogies: Turns in gender studies and critical theory (PUEG 2012), in collaboration with Rían Lozano; and Race and gender in the creation of new worlds (FCyS/PUEG, 2009). Professor Belausteguigoitia has been one of the most active scholars in translating, teaching and researching the work of Chicanas and Chicana theory in México. She has brought about into Spanish Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza and Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed, edited by UNAM_._

Her work in relation with the US academy is evident in both publications, lectures, key note speeches as well as teaching activities. She has developed a very active academic relation with the United States (especially with the University of Rutgers, NYU, University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles and lately through the Mellon Foundation with the Northwestern University at Chicago). In Europe she works actively with Germany (Frei Universität Berlin, Postdam University and Humboldt University), Spain (Universidad Miguel Hernández in Elche) and in Latin-America mainly with Colombia and Argentina (Universidad de Antioquia and University of Buenos Aires UBA). She has given more than 200 lectures related with the topics mentioned above.

During her stay at NYU, Prof. Belausteguigoitia will be teaching the graduate course Arte, activismo y academia - Urgencias sociales y universidad crítica and will organize the symposium Critical University, Critical Dissidence: Pedagogies of Art and Violence in the Americas (April 25 & 26, 2019), as well as two public lectures.