María Lugones was an Argentine scholar, philosopher, feminist, and a professor of comparative literature and Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies at Binghamton University in New York. She was part of the modernity / coloniality school of thought; her concept of the “coloniality of gender” paved the way for a new understanding of oppression and power. However, her scholarship ranged across disciplines, from social and political philosophy to Latino politics, Andean philosophy, decolonial feminism, popular education, and theories of resistance. She combined influential scholarship with decades of work as a social activist in Latin America and the United States. In 1990, she co-founded La Escuela Popular Norteña in northern New Mexico, a popular-education collective that holds workshops on community economics, health care, and violence against women, among other topics.
