Maria Eugenia Santana majored in Social Anthropology and did her Masters degree in Natural Resources and Rural Development, and her PhD in Social Sciences with a thesis about complementary money in the context of “Economy of Solidarity” in Mexico and Argentina (in September of 2008).
Dr. Santana is professor of Social Anthropology and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Chiapas State University. She has made field work at Chiapas and the central region of Mexico.
In 2009 she presented, alongside Dr. Villareal, the proposal for research titled “Analysis of Financial Practices among Indigenous Families in Two Municipalities of the Chiapas Highlands inMexico” to the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion at the University of California,Irvine. Such proposal was reviewed and accepted funding.
Nowadays, her research is focused on issues of “Economy of the Solidarity”, gender, popular finance and social money from an anthropological perspective.
Maria Eugenia Santana does volunteer work since 1983 looking for alternatives to the indigenous women of Chiapas, supporting several projects and facilitating workshops. At the present time is a consultant for a project of a group of women called “Women and Maize”.