Congratulations to Veronica Vicencio Diaz, this year’s winner of the Gary Sealey Award!
Veronica is in her second year of a Master’s program in Anthropology at Carleton University.
Her award-winning research concentrates on two towns in Veracruz, Mexico, as they represent the places she grew up and navigated during her childhood and teenage years, as well as where her existing LGBTQ network resides.
She aimed to examine how queer Mexicans challenge both the traditional gender role system and the heterosexual context embedded in society. To research this, she observed the daily practices of LGBTQ individuals to deconstruct:
a) they transform/re-inscribe Mexican patriarchal environments and machismo;
b) the possibilities for sexual agency
c) the spaces they use to socialize and feel safe
Veronica wanted to discover how machismo shapes people’s material and discursive practices, and how people interact with and thus affect the ideology by transforming it, especially in a hypermasculine cultural context like the Mexican heteronormative environment.
That’s awesome, Veronica! Many congrats, and keep up the good work