ORCID: 0000-0002-7839-9870

Uxía Otero González (Cervo, 1992) is a Postdoc Fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela and obtained a PhD in Contemporary History (2022) from the same institution. Her dissertation, entitled “Domesticating Female Bodies in the Spanish Franco Dictatorship (1939–1975): The (Re)Modeling of Normative Femininity and its Sartorial Embodiment in the Transition of the Fifties”, obtained the qualification of Outstanding Cum Laude, the International Mention and the ICARUS Award in Arts, Humanities, Social and Legal Sciences.

Uxía’s research is framed in the spatiotemporal coordinates of Francoist Spain, with particular attention to the transformations that took place in the context of the international rehabilitation of the dictatorship and the transition to a consumer society from the 1950s. Her innovative contribution lies in using clothing as a critical tool to analyze how women embodied and/or transgressed gender normative discourses. This pioneering approach connects the gender history of Francoism with sartorial or fashion studies, a booming field around clothing and fashion that allows her to incorporate a transdisciplinary and transnational perspective.

Uxía’s Postdoc Project, “CostuMe(s), clothing and sartorial memories for an (in)material history in women of the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975)”, is funded by the Xunta de Galicia, Galician Government (Ref.: ED481B-2023-068). This project addresses the ties between gender, clothing, memories, and (im)material culture in 20th-century Spain. The project’s short title is a bilingual play on words that precisely highlights the transnational dimensions of fashion. In Galician, her first language, “costumes” means habits or common practices carried out by a person or a community. In English, “costumes” refers to collections of dress artifacts, but also clothing that is typical clothing of a culture or society that invites reflections on identities, folklore, and nation. By capitalizing Me(s), this acronym also wants to convey the heterogeneous and plural dimensions of (un)dressing based on bodily practices and sartorial memories, both personal and generational. Through her account @costu_me_s, on Instagram or X, Uxía disseminates her research work and interests to connect with a broader audience.

Uxía is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Toronto Metropolitan University – School of Fashion (Canada, January – December 2024), working closely with Professor Alison Matthews David on the history of fashion and textiles. Moreover, Uxía is also deepening her knowledge of the (im)material cultures surrounding fashion, primarily through the TMU Fashion Research Collection (FRC), as well as a handy and didactic collaboration with Eve Townsend, TMU lecturer, and FRC Director. In parallel, Uxía also maximizes her research stay by collaborating as a Visiting Fellow with another Canadian research center, the Northrop Frye Centre, part of Victoria College at the University of Toronto (Canada, September – December 2024). Her international postdoc profile will be complemented with a 12-month stay at the University of Porto (Portugal, January – December 2025), where she will continue exploring a comparative approach between the 20th–century Iberian dictatorial regimes. These postdoctoral stays consolidated a research profile that included three short international research stays in the predoctoral stage as an FPU (Spanish Government Fellowship): 1) at the French institution Casa de Velázquez (Madrid, October – December 2017), financed by the Council for Galician Culture; 2) at the Florida International University (United States, October – December 2018), under the supervision of Aurora Morcillo, mentor and specialist in gender history and Francoism with her works True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco’s Spain (2000) and The Seduction of Modern Spain. The Female Body and the Francoist Body Politic (2010); and 3) at the University of Lisbon – Institute of Social Sciences (Portugal, October – December 2019), under the supervision of Anne Cova, expert in comparative history and transnational history of women.

Her scientific results have been presented at more than twenty international conferences, and she has also been a guest speaker at different institutions in Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. Uxía also carried out peer-reviewed evaluations for international journals and published in English as the sole author in indexed journals such as the Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics or the Journal of Religious History; the latter is the JORH’s article that has received the most attention according to the Altmetric Attention Score. In addition to taking advantage of international stays and conferences to weave collaboration networks using fashion and gender as common threads, Uxía also develops co-authored works with other HISTAGRA’s researchers focusing on Galicia: with Ana Cabana y Alba Díaz-Geada, rethinking rural women and peasants during Franco’s regime; with Daniela Ferrández, paving the way on gender sartorial dissidences and cross-dressing in the first half of the 20th century; and with Conchi López, reflecting on the material culture and sartorial memories of the Francoist graves intervened within the Quadrennial Plan of Democratic Memory of Galicia (PMD, 2021–2024).