Portal U de A

By: Andrea Carolina Vargas Malagón, journalist at the UdeA Communications Department 

"What identifies and differentiates us as human beings? How can we grow together amid these differences?" These questions have haunted professor and researcher María Eumelia Galeano Marín, who received an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the UdeA on September 29. This is a recognition for a lifetime dedicated to knowledge, teaching, and developing critical thinking. It also acknowledges her work, through which she demonstrated that social research goes beyond gathering facts and accumulating figures. It involves delving into life stories, contexts, and often-forgotten voices. 

The honorary award was presented in the Teresita Gómez Performing Arts Hall on the Medellín Campus. Photo: Communications Department / Alejandra Uribe F.  
 
"She taught us that knowing is also understanding, and that understanding is opening up to others with sensitivity, respect, and ethics." With these words, John Jairo Arboleda Céspedes, Universidad de Antioquia’s president, highlighted Professor María Eumelia Galeano Marín's contributions to several generations of social researchers through her studies and work on qualitative research. For this career, Universidad de Antioquia awarded Galeano Marín an honorary doctorate in social sciences. 

The presentation of this recognition —which took place on Monday, September 29, in the Teresita Gómez Performing Arts Hall on the Medellín Campus— was made official through Superior Resolution 2656 of 2025 and was born from the shared motivation between the faculties of Social and Human Sciences, Nursing, and Education, as well as Universidad Católica Luis Amigó and the Fundación Centro Internacional de Educación y Desarrollo Humano (CINDE) (International Center for Education and Human Development Foundation). They highlighted a fundamental contribution to the social sciences thanks to Galeano Marín’s deep dedication to social research and commitment to academic excellence and humanistic training. 

"Professor Eumelia showed us that research is not about accumulating empty data or figures, but rather about approaching life stories, contexts, emotions, and voices that have often been forgotten or silenced," said President John Jairo Arboleda Céspedes during the ceremony. The professor arrived at UdeA in 1973 as a student of the master's in educational administration, with which she complemented her training as a sociologist and specialist in drug dependence and in the sociology of Latin American development. At the University, she worked for decades as a professor in the Department of Sociology, the faculties of Nursing, Law, Education, Arts, and Economics, and the Regional Studies and Political Studies institutes. Her academic career integrated research and outreach, always with methodological rigor and the conviction that knowledge should respond to the realities of communities. 

"Qualitative research is profoundly human. It allows us to understand, with others and from others, those dehumanized and also humanized worlds that allow us to build paths to advance in social construction, to understand, as far as we can, the reasons and the lack of reasons for the wars we suffer today, and also to imagine and contribute to building a world where we recognize ourselves and live as what we are: human beings in permanent transformation," stated Galeano Marín, now an honorary doctor in social sciences. 

According to the academic peers who evaluated the nomination for the honorary degree —Juan Ignacio Piovani, Tomás Rodríguez-Villasante, and Carlos Arturo Sandoval Casilimas— Professor Galeano emerged in an academic context that favored quantitative methods and, within this setting, consolidated a path that gave voice and legitimacy to qualitative research. They noted that her contributions not only transformed the training of new generations of sociologists and research practice but also, through her written work, helped consolidate the scientific recognition of qualitative methods and their dissemination in Colombia and Latin America. 

Galeano Marín's thinking and legacy have been captured in fundamental works such as “Estrategias de investigación social cualitativa. El giro en la mirada” (Strategies for Qualitative Social Research: The Turn in the Gaze), a book that has guided hundreds of students, teachers, and researchers in Colombia and Latin America. In its pages, the professor invites us to rethink the role of the researcher, question the established order, and understand that tools such as participant observation, oral history, and focus groups represent much more than simple methods: They constitute an ethical and political stance toward knowledge. Her work, far from merely transmitting techniques, opens a space for deep reflection, is moving, and leaves lasting concerns. 

"Many of us from many disciplines are grateful to fate for having crossed paths with Professor María Eumelia Galeano. Each of her achievements is a source of inspiration and guidance," said Carlos Andrés Aristizábal, a Department of Sociology professor at Universidad de Antioquia, regarding this distinction, which not only recognized the professor's academic merits but also celebrated her humanistic and critical spirit, fundamental pillars of the University.