Dr Ange La Furcia
Colombia
Centre of Latin American Studies, Clare Hall
PhD thesis:
Sea Antics: The Politics of Beauty and Transwomen in the Colombian Western Caribbean
Travesuras marinas: Mujeres trans y las políticas de la belleza en el Caribe occidental colombiano
Sii Antiks: Di Palitiks a Byuti an Chrans-uman iina di Kolombian Wes Karibyan
My thesis studied how transwomen or maras use beauty as a form of political assertion and communitarian intervention to cope with social contempt in the Caribbean. I undertook long-term ethnographic and community-based research, closely observing the involvement of transwomen in beauty pageants, hair salons and cultural festivities. The Miss Nancy Land Organisation for Afro-Caribbean Women and Young Islanders, LGBTI public policy events and my participation as an amateur beauty queen served as ethnographic tools to explore transwomen’s claims made through beauty.
I argued that transwomen or maras engage with the politics of beauty to affirm and negotiate their sense of communitarian belonging, individuality and dignity. To confront social contempt, transwomen’s efforts involve a variety of creative actions and experiences to carve out a path, assert themselves and reaffirm their bonds to the archipelago community using beauty. This is what I refer to as Sea Antics.
After the PhD
Publishing is my current work as a Blakes Fund Postdoctoral awardee at Clare Hall College, focusing on labour, gender and sexualities studies.
I employed an article-based thesis format to examine, through in-depth studies, four key settings in which maras deploy Sea Antics to cope with social contempt. Four articles on religion, the lived experiences of trans beauty, corruption, and beauty care work will be published soon.
My thesis, supervised by Pedro Mendes Loureiro and R. Sánchez-Rivera, won the 2026 LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Dissertation Award. I am honoured to attend the ceremony in Paris in May, where my contribution to the first issue on Trans Studies at the CEDREF has been published!
I remain engaged in community work with the Miss Nancy Land Organisation, located in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and Ketlina, as a core member supporting fundraising campaigns. Please do contact us if you would like to support us!