Sandra Santos Fraile

Sandra Santos Fraile is a Lecturer of Social Anthropology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, specializing in Sikh communities, migration, diaspora studies, body and embodiment, gender, and obstetric violence. Her research primarily focuses on Sikhs who have migrated to Spain, examining how bodily changes and corporeality transform following the migration process and how these transformations relate to identity negotiation.

Dr. Santos Fraile earned her doctorate from Universitat de Barcelona in 2016 with her thesis "La comunidad sikh de Barcelona: Una aproximación etnográfica. Prácticas, negociación y transformaciones en el cuerpo y la corporalidad tras el proceso migratorio," supervised by Dr. Danielle Provansal and Dr. José Mª Valcuende del Río. Her doctoral research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the FPU (Formación del Profesorado Universitario) scholarship program, reflecting her early academic promise.

Her research interests span multiple interconnected domains of social anthropology. She investigates how Sikh migrants to Spain negotiate identity, particularly focusing on gender dynamics, bodily transformations, and religious practices. Her work examines how migration creates spaces for identity renegotiation, especially regarding gender roles and bodily expressions. She has pioneered research on multisited ethnography methodologies, demonstrating how anthropological fieldwork must adapt to transnational realities where communities exist across multiple geographic locations. Her theoretical framework draws on concepts from transnational studies, gender theory, and embodiment studies, engaging with scholars like Arjun Appadurai, Steven Vertovec, and Nestor García Canclini.

Dr. Santos Fraile's scientific contributions have been recognized with a Seal of Excellence from the European Commission for the TRAMIETHIM PROJECT in 2019, indicating her research met all Horizon 2020 assessment thresholds with a score of 85% or higher. Her publications consistently explore how Sikh communities in Spain maintain religious identity while adapting to new social contexts, with particular attention to how young Sikh women develop new forms of agency within their communities.

She has coordinated special issues on multisited and transnational ethnographies, collaborating with Ester Massó Guijarro. Her fieldwork spans multiple locations including Barcelona, London, Delhi, and Punjab, reflecting her commitment to understanding transnational communities through comprehensive, multi-sited research approaches that challenge traditional anthropological methodologies.