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After obtaining a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country (UPV\/EHU) and an interuniversity MA in Contemporary History, Mart\u00ednez Aretxabaleta continued her studies in the homonymous PhD programme under the supervision of Nerea Aresti. Her first two years were subsidised by the R&D&I programme \u2018Zabalduz: Trainee Research Staff in Collaboration with the Productive and Social Environment\u2019<\/strong>, while also working in the research project jointly run by the UPV\/EHU and the Fine Arts Museum in Bilbao. Mart\u00ednez Aretxabaleta is currently combining her research activities with lecturing.With an interest in gender and art history, Mart\u00ednez Aretxabaleta\u2019s line of research focuses on analysing identity-building processes and the capacity of art to (re)produce those models and to give new meaning to reality. In her PhD thesis, which focuses on the Basque Country at the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the following one, she performs an analysis on the political cultures of mass society during that period through their expression in the cultural realm, specifically in the visual arts (especially painting, but also sculpture, drawing and etching). She thus attempts to inquire into how art, as a social and political agent, contributed to build class, nationalist and gender identities.<\/p>\n