Martha Moscoso is a sociologist and historian, with an advanced degree in Sociology of Development from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and a master’s degree in Andean History from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Quito. In addition to leading the Ecuador program site for HECUA, Martha is a professor in the Human Sciences faculty at Quito's Catholic University. She has done extensive research in women's studies and gender studies and in indigenous communities' history. Martha has participated in numerous academic conferences and has published many articles on history in Ecuadorian and Latin American books and journals. Recently she has done research on education in Ecuador, sponsored by the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and the International Bureau of Education - UNESCO (IBE). This research was conducted within the framework of an international program for the construction of political dialogue in the field of education. Martha is member of the Institute of Ecuadorian Studies (IEE), a nonprofit organization that works in local development and citizen formation. She participates actively in a Citizen Assembly that aims at active participation at very local levels by people seeking social change. She is also a member of the Atelier of Historical Studies (TEHIS).
Teaching & Learning with HECUA Students
The era in which I came of age was a time full of ideals and idealism, encouraged by the winds of different world revolutions and by fights against meaningless wars. It was informed by a variety of ideas put forward by the “hippie” generation, by artists, by the Latin American "boom" in literature and music created on this continent by singers like Victor Jara, Violeta Parra, Mercedes Sosa and many others. It was a time of fighting against the horrors of dictatorships and of supporting all those Latin American people forced to leave their countries. All of these experiences contributed to my hopes for a different world, a more human world.
At the beginning of my commitment to HECUA, at the end of 1998, I did not know that working with HECUA would be one of the most enriching and fruitful experiences I have ever had. At the start I had doubts about how important it was to bring foreign students to come to live in Ecuador, and I worried that while some would truly observe reality in Ecuador, others would just be tourists. That fear was based on what I knew about other programs for foreign students in this country. With all this in mind, I visited HECUA for the first time and met the people working there. As the days passed, and I learned more and more about the work of the organization and the commitment of those who worked there, I changed my mind and I realized that working with HECUA was the best decision I could take. I am more and more convinced of that.
Working with students is an innovative, committed, and shared educational experience. Our teaching methodology is not a traditional one. We teachers and students are engaged together in a learning process to construct knowledge, to learn about a concrete reality, the Ecuadorian reality This is a mutual learning process in which students and teachers have roles as apprentices and instructors, each of us with our own knowledge, our own life experiences, and our own abilities and perceptions in search of a common goal. This mutuality is one of the most enriching aspects for me and the team that builds and carries out this program.
For me teaching, then, is a process in which academics and politics are combined in order to help form citizens who are conscious of the challenges they have to face to overcome inequalities in society. Teaching is a process oriented to defending life, achieving autonomy, with responsibility and ethics, for one’s own life and the lives of those around us.
My participation in CILA goes far beyond the academic sphere, for among my tasks is that of preparing the right conditions for the students’ integrated learning. This includes finding organizations for internships, families with whom the students will live, topics of interest to be analyzed, and creating orientations so that students’ stay in Quito is safe, but at the same time enjoyable. In CILA, we analyze the situation of Ecuador, its democracy, its economy and restricted benefits, as well as the ongoing crises that come about from the economic model in place. But above all we put emphasis on the study of alternatives put forward by different social sectors for ways to change Ecuadorian society. Thanks to internships and field visits, the students have the opportunity to obtain first-hand knowledge about some of these alternatives, and participate in efforts to bring about change.
As the situation in Ecuador is always changing, so too is the content of the CILA program. We introduce in each program new ideas, new possibilities for internships, and new field visits. These constant changes allow us to offer many possibilities for reflection. Ecuador is a country that changes, a country that suffers, that opens itself to the outside or that falls back searching for its own identity, that opens its arms, but that is also rebellious.
My Research and Current Projects
My academic background is in history and sociology, and my experience as a teacher and researcher has mainly developed in these two areas. Both in my work on the past and on the present, my axes of interest have been the indigenous community in the Andes in the south of Ecuador, especially women, young people, and children. Within my research and publications on historical topics are analyses of gender roles in the first Ecuadorian novel written about a woman (La Emancipada [The Emancipated]). Other projects are on women and education, indigenous women and the "mestizaje" process in the cities, women and family, domestic violence, the legal system, and the roles and images of women. My work on the indigenous community includes publications exploring the systems of state and indigenous authority, tributes and contributions, forms of work, land ownership systems, and social uprising and conflicts. My research on the present-day has to do with the work of women and girls, secondary education in Ecuador, and experiential education. I have published numerous pieces on these topics, and have participated in many academic congresses, conferences, and seminars.
Presentations and Publications
Recent Publications:
Dynamiques du développement de l'Education Secondaire et Transfert de modèles éducatifs en Equateur durant les XIXe et XXe siècles. Actes du Seminar Secondary Education Worldwide: Assessments and Perspectives, Geneva, International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO), the University of Geneva and the Service de la Recherche en Education de Genève (SRED), 2005.
"Imágenes y roles de género en 'La Emancipada'. Primera novela ecuatoriana, 1863. Women and Gender History Seminar, Lima, CENDOC-MUJER, 2006.
Recent Presentations:
Ecuadorian Congress of History, Ibarra-Ecuador, July 12 - 15, 2006. Presented paper: From the religious to the liberal moral. Women as teachers.
Third meeting of the Ecuadorian Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), FLACSO, Quito, June 29 - July 1, 2006. Presented paper: Women and work, social representations at the beginning of the XX Century.
International Meeting on History of the regional education and the actual prospective in the Andean America, sponsored by the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Frensh Institute of Andean Studies, Universidad Salesiana and the TEHIS, Quito, May 10-12, 2006. Presented paper: Preparing Women for Work through Education at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Ecuador: introducing internships to local and international social justice and social service organizations. Challenges and best practices. "Developing Culturally Appropriate Models for International Internships", NSEE/ICEL Annual Conference, Miami, October 2004.
Preliminary seminar of the International Conference on Education (ICE), sponsored by the International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO), the University of Geneva and the Service de la Recherche en Education de Genève (SRED), Geneva, September 5 - 7, 2004. Presented paper: "Dynamiques du développement de l'Education Secondaire et Transfert de modèles éducatifs en Equateur durant les XIXe et XXe siècles."
Women and Gender History Seminar, Lima, November 2003. Presented paper: "Imágenes y roles de género en 'La Emancipada' Primera novela ecuatoriana, 1863."
Seminar: The transference of models of secondary education. Sponsored by the International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO), the University of Geneva, the Université d'été des droits de l'homme de Genève, Geneva, September 25 -27, 2003. This seminar was held to present the results of research done in Ecuador.