Staff profile

Belén joined Durham Law School in October 2022 as a PhD Candidate, funded by an AHRC (Northern Bridge) Doctoral Studentship. Her research lies at the intersection of criminal law, feminist criminology, and socio-legal studies, with a particular focus on punitive approaches to women’s reproductive capacity in Latin America. Her thesis is titled Institutional Gender-Based Violence in the Criminalisation of Vulnerable Women for Involuntary Obstetric Incidents in Argentina. 

She obtained her Law degree (LLB) from the Universidad Nacional del Nordeste in Argentina. She completed a Dual Master of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of York and Universidad de Oviedo (Spain), funded by an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, and her dissertation was awarded a distinction. From 2019 to 2022 she worked as a Research Fellow for her home institution in Argentina, on a project focused on reproductive justice in northeast Argentina, and the local state’s lack of compliance with national and international human rights standards. Belén has been admitted to practice as a lawyer in Argentina. In the past, she has practised Family Law, and has been part of her home Law School’s pro-bono clinic, offering free legal services to women survivors of intimate-partner violence. She was also an intern at the Organization of American States (OAS).

In addition to her doctoral research, Belén has served as a Research Fellow on the Northern Bridge EDI Action project at Newcastle University, contributing to a mixed‑methods study on linguistic barriers faced by scholars from non‑traditional and underrepresented backgrounds in pursuing academic careers. In her role as Deputy Director of Gender and Law at Durham, she co‑organised a two‑day workshop on Feminist Constitutions aimed at PGRs and ECRs, funded by an AHRC grant. The event employed innovative and non‑traditional methods —such as zine‑making, playful acting, and crafting— and was delivered in collaboration with colleagues from Durham, Queen’s University Belfast, and Newcastle University, bringing together participants from a range of UK and European institutions. In previous years, she worked as a Part‑Time Tutor in Criminal Law and UK Constitutional Law, as well as a Fellow in the Law with Foundation Programme at Durham’s Centre for Academic Development (DCAD).

Current Research

Belén's PhD thesis offers the first systematic examination of prosecutions against women in Argentina for 'aggravated murder due to the family relationship' and 'child abandonment' following cases of spontaneous pregnancy loss. This is a phenomenon that she conceptualises as criminalised involuntary obstetric incidents. Her work argues that gender bias ultimately determines the framing of these cases as criminal offences, targeting and punishing the most vulnerable women. Belén is employing Reflexive Thematic Analysis and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis to examine court documents corresponding to twenty-four cases of criminalised involuntary obstetric incidents heard by Argentine courts between 2018 and 2024. This research is supervised by Prof Clare McGlynn and Dr Camilla Pickles.

Papers

Selected conference papers

• ‘The Invisible Gendered Violence Behind the Persistent Punishment of Women for Involuntary Obstetric Incidents in Argentina’, Gender and Sexuality Research in Times of Crisis Symposium, Birkbeck, University of London, February 2026
• ‘The (real) Handmaid’s Tale: Criminalisation of women from vulnerable backgrounds for involuntary obstetric incidents in Argentina’, 6th edition of the Summer School for Young Researchers, Faculty of Law of the Universitat de València, June 2025
• ‘Contextualising the Criminalisation of Involuntary Incidents Connected with Pregnancy and Childbirth’, SLSA Annual Conference, University of Liverpool, April 2025 
• ‘Influence of Gender Stereotypes on the Criminalisation of Women for “Involuntary Obstetric Incidents” in Argentina’, GenDJus Workshop on Gender Stereotyping in International Human Rights Law and Discourse, Università di Bologna, November 2024
• ‘Motherhood on Trial: Gender Biases in the Determination of Criminal Responsibility of Women Accused of Causing the Death of their Newborn Children in Argentina’, JLS 50th Anniversary Conference, Cardiff University, October 2024
• ‘Punishing “bad” mothers: Use of gender stereotypes in the criminalisation of vulnerable women for involuntary negative pregnancy outcomes in Argentina’, IV International Conference on Global Peripheries, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina, August 2024
• ‘Anti-rights practices and Government responses: Analysing the post-legalisation landscape of abortion in Argentina’, Workshop on Pregnancy and the Law, University of Southampton, September 2023
• ‘(Un)Motherhood, madness and crime: pathologising courtroom discourses in cases of infanticide in Argentina’, 23rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (EUROCRIM), Florence, Italy, September 2023 

Published papers

Mattos Castañeda B, ‘Gender Stereotypes and Vulnerability: Analysis of Criminal Convictions in Cases of Obstetric Emergencies in the Province of Corrientes (Argentina)’ [Estereotipos de género y vulnerabilidad: análisis de sentencias penales por emergencias obstétricas en la provincia de Corrientes] (2024), Estudios sobre Jurisprudencia, Public Defender’s Office of Argentina https://repositorio.mpd.gov.ar/jspui/handle/123456789/5497

Menéndez Sebastián E and Mattos Castañeda B, ‘Better Decision-Making, Algorithmic Discrimination and Gender Biases: A New Challenge for the Administration of the 21st Century’ (2022) 3(1) European Review of Digital Administration & Law 45 https://www.erdalreview.eu/pubblicazioni/estratti/10.53136/97912218007844-better-decisionmaking-algorithmic-discrimination-and-gender-biases-a-new-challenge-for-the-administration-of-the-21st-century-estratto.html

Mattos Castañeda, B 'Lack of gender-sensitive approaches and symbolic violence against women in criminal convictions in cases of obstetric emergencies in the Province of Corrientes, Argentina' [Falta de perspectiva de género y violencia simbólica en las sentencias penales en casos de emergencias obstétricas en Corrientes] in Alba De Bianchetti (ed), XVII Jornadas y VII Internacional de Comunicaciones Científicas de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales y Políticas - UNNE (Moglia Ediciones 2021) https://repositorio.unne.edu.ar/xmlui/handle/123456789/51118.

Mattos Castañeda, B 'Institutional violence against the reproductive freedom of people capable of pregnancy' [Violencia institucional contra la libertad reproductiva de personas con capacidad de gestar] in Alba De Bianchetti (ed), XVI Jornadas y VI Internacional de Comunicaciones Científicas de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales y Políticas - UNNE (Moglia Ediciones 2020) https://repositorio.unne.edu.ar/xmlui/handle/123456789/29739. 

Research groups

Gender & Law at Durham (GLAD)

Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (CCLCJ) 

Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA) 

• Criminal Justice
• Human rights
• Reproductive rights
• Violence against women