Maria Isabel Messina is a sociologist and visual anthropologist currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropological Sciences at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), Mexico. She teaches courses on anthropology of art and qualitative research methods. Her work focuses on gender, affect, and politics, with an emphasis on feminist and decolonial epistemologies. Through visual and collaborative methodologies, she explores the intersections between emotion, subjectivity, and collective memory, especially in the lives of trans women in Central America. Her first short documentary, Nuestras Historias, combines cinematic storytelling with anthropological inquiry to challenge dominant narratives and generate affective spaces of knowledge production.