Profile

Julieta Restrepo Berrío is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She holds a B.A. in History (with Honors) and an M.A. in Aesthetics (summa cum laude) from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín. 

Her M.A. dissertation, “Eso extraño que somos”. Una aproximación estética a la producción de la transexualidad femenina desde la práctica de la prostitución callejera en Barbacoas," examines the ways in which trans/travesti sex workers in downtown Medellín develop intricate mechanisms of self-perception, fashioning, and display. By integrating aesthetic thought, urban anthropology, history, and queer theory, this work analyzes how these individuals employ synthetic and prosthetic modifications to reconfigure social and anatomical boundaries, challenging binary ontologies and revealing the artificial and performative dimensions of gender and sexuality. Her research has been presented in university classrooms and workshops, and published in various cultural and academic outlets. 

Julieta’s current interests focus on the plasticity and metamorphic condition of non-normative bodies, as well as the historical recovery of queer narratives in Latin American cities through literature, photography, cinema, and archival work. For her doctoral research, she aims to explore the intersection of trans/travesti corporality and memory within contexts of state persecution and authoritarianism.