BIO
“Trafficking of girls and Catholic missionary networks in the South China Sea (18th-19th centuries): a transnational approach”
Marina Torres is doctor in Early Modern History with the distinction "cum laude" from the University of Cantabria and the Autonomous University of Madrid (2019). She graduated in History in 2013, and continued her training with the Master's Degree in Advanced Studies in Early Modern History specifically focus on the Hispanic Monarchy from Autonomous University of Madrid and University of Cantabria (2014). She has undertaken research stays in the Academia Sinica in Taipei (2015), the Università Roma Trè in Rome (2016 and 2017), the Instituto de Ciências Socias from the Universidade Lisboa (2018), Brown University in Providence (2019), the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Spain (2021) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (2021-2022) also in Spain. Her dissertation explored Christianity in China, Mendicant missions, cultural encounters, and hybridization. She is currently Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium with the project “Trafficking of girls and Catholic missionary networks in the South China Sea (18th-19th centuries): a transnational approach” (2022-2024).
Research and project
My research is focused on cultural encounters in China and Southeast Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. I am interested in the movement of women and children within the Pacific, and this phenomenon was related to the Catholic missionary networks operating in the South China Sea.
In the project UNSILENCE (Grant Agreement 101026462) I explore the movement of Chinese abandoned girls from Canton and Macau to the Philippines to provide a new history of the exchanges within the Pacific and raise awareness about the importance of History to understand the historical roots of issues that concern us all: human rights, decolonisation in Asia, the rights of women and children, and gender equality.
This project is based at the Early Modern History Unit at KU Leuven (Belgium) in collaboration with the ERC TRANSPACIFIC and the Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies (BCDSS)
