María González Pendás is an architectural historian of modernity and coloniality of the Spanish transatlantic world whose research explores the intersections of aesthetics, technologies, ideologies and power through the built environment.

Prior to joining Cornell in 2021, she taught at Vassar College, The Cooper Union and Columbia University, where she coordinated the Public Humanities Initiative of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities to promote civically engaged forms of scholarship and pedagogy. At Columbia, she built up the Humanities in Practice Initiative to offer fellowships, events and courses that help humanists experiment with new modes of engaged scholarship. Among other projects, she led the graduate student series Building Publics, awarded with the 2021 Addressing Racism Seed Grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, and served on Public Humanities Fellowship Committees at the SoF/Heyman, The Stavros-Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative and Humanities New York.

At Cornell, she supports art and architecture students to conceive of public projects together with partner organizations in Queens and Ithaca.