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. Her current book manuscript, Holy Modern: Technocracy, Theocracy and the Architectures of Hispanic Fascism, studies the architectural workings of fascism, technocracy, and the imperial figment of Hispanidad in the second postwar and through the lens of Spain. Other projects have investigated relations of labor and race in México; the coloniality of concrete technologies and innovation across the South Atlantic; and the relationship between technology, religion, and secularism in global modernity.

González Pendás has received grants and fellowships from the Society of Architectural Historians, the Graham Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation, among others, and was a member of Columbia University's Society of Fellows in the Humanities from 2016–19. From 2019-2021, she was Public Humanities Fellow with the SOF/Heyman where she coordinated Public Humanities initiatives and the Public Humanities Graduate Fellows. She received her Ph.D. in Architecture History and Theory from Columbia University and her Masters in Architecture from the Polytechnic University in Madrid. Prior to joining Cornell, she taught at Vassar College, The Cooper Union, and the Art History Department at Columbia University, where she also coordinated the public humanities initiative of the SOF/Heyman Center for the Humanities to promote civically engaged forms of scholarship and pedagogy.