Doctoral Researchers

Anai Vera is a Paraguayan anthropologist, biologist, and researcher living in Brazil. Anai is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of São Paulo. Her research focuses on Guarani ethnology and other Indigenous peoples of the South American Lowlands. She assists and collaborates with organizations dedicated to Indigenous rights. She worked for ten years in the public sector, at the Ministry of Education and Sciences and the National Secretariat of Culture of Paraguay, participating in the collective development of public policies with and for Indigenous Peoples, grounded in cultural revalorization and strengthening.

What is a forest? Translating the Atlantic Forest through Guarani thought This ethnographic research seeks to understand cosmopolitical and poetic aspects of the translations carried out by two Indigenous thinkers from the Rio Silveira Indigenous Land (Bertioga, SP, Brazil) in relation to the Atlantic Forest. In contrast to the Western designation of this biome, they have proposed thinking of it through the Guarani Mbya term Nhe’ẽry, “the place where souls bathe.” The forest, in this sense, implies a system of multispecies interactions and demands the recognition of the agencies of both human and non-human beings, destabilizing Western conceptions of forest, nature, society—as well as ecology and science. By reflecting on the images and poetics they mobilize, we discuss the particular ways these thinkers translate their cosmology to non-Indigenous society and analyze the alternatives posed by the task of translating worlds (and not just words). Indigenous translation is understood here as a cosmopolitical proposal that contains a radical critique of the Western way of life while also seeking to build bridges between different cultural universes. This research, conducted as an “engaged anthropology” through collaborative methods, aims to amplify the diffusion of Indigenous thought in defense of forests, the struggle for land, and the continuity of the Guarani way of being.

[Picture: Luis Vera]

Boardmember of the Parent in Science movement and a mother of two, Camila is currently pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of São Paulo (USP). Her research involves the dynamics around inclusive policies within the scientific realm, with a special focus on motherhood related ones. Her research objects are the science’s funding bodies and the academic international collaboration framework.

Advancing Gender Equity in ST&I Policies: An analysis of inclusive policies that impact motherhood in academia
The research investigates the dynamics involved in formulating policies that incorporate the maternity perspective in Brazilian academia, articulating a theoretical discussion on social justice and the acceptance of this agenda by science, analyzed as an institution. The work also includes the role of academic activism, especially of a feminist nature, in the dissemination of these ideas that influence scientific policy. The empirical object is the laws at the foundation of the agenda, which guide the right to maternity leave by science funding bodies at different stages of the academic career, as well as the policies, bills and institutional arrangements that paved the way for the construction of the laws.

Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and undergraduate in History and Images from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ernesto is a CONICET doctoral fellow and is pursuing his doctorate in Language Studies at the UNLP, connected to IdIHCS. He is a member of REICRE, an interdisciplinary research network on cultures and regions, and his research focuses on the History of Ideas.

The Gran Chaco: Imaginary representations of space and social alterities during the first half of the twentieth century
The research investigates the imaginary representations of space and social alterities in the Argentine Gran Chaco, produced between the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It engages with two main discursive types: literary and narrative texts—including essays, fiction, and travel accounts—and discourses with scientific aspirations, particularly scientific anthropology and ethnographic photography. Covering the period from the first military campaigns in the Chaco (1884) to the late 1950s, the study examines ideological convergences, resignifications, and disputes that persist in representations of the region and in the struggle for discursive hegemony. The project explores how representations of Chaco’s Indigenous peoples are shaped by the civilization–barbarism dichotomy, while portrayals of the landscape oscillate between visions of paradise/promised land and desert. It analyzes the tension between cultural constructions of indigeneity and the concrete policies of concentration implemented by the Argentine state and Franciscan religious missions. Additionally, the research examines how these representations, conflicts, and ideologies are reflected in the works of the first generation of artists and intellectuals from Chaco, emerging from the 1940s onward.

Isadora Cardoso holds a bachelor’s in political science from the University of Brasilia and a master’s in globalisation and development studies from Maastricht University. In their PhD, Isadora works at the tensioned borders of activism and research, focusing on discourses and practices on and for climate justice through decolonial, queer, intersectional methods, ethics and concepts. Before the PhD, they were a fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability – RIFS Potsdam, investigating just energy transitions in Brazil and Germany. Isadora has been working with and studying intersectional and decolonial perspectives and solutions to the climate crisis since 2016 with NGOs, UN agencies, social movements and foundations focusing on gender and climate justice in Brazil, Germany, and transnationally at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

One struggle One fight: Intersectional and decolonial action research perspectives on movements and communities demanding climate justice
This research project explores the potentials of combining decolonial, intersectional and queer methods, ideas and ethics to enhance climate justice action research. The project was carried out with activist collectives and communities organised around positionalities/differences, such as youth and Quilombola groups in Brasil, and South Africa, besides participatory observation in international climate conferences and Berlin activist spaces I belong to. In these spaces, Isadora asks questions about how privilege and oppression articulate with demands and visions that research participants have for climate justice. Moved by questions that are grounded on emancipatory critical thought, like how can differently positioned agents work together to end co-dependent oppressive systems and foster justice, and inspired by Patricia Hill Collins (2019) most recent elaboration of intersectionality as critical social theory, they present arguments based on the will to drive change in social research and political organising. By thoroughly reflecting on key moments of the fieldwork, as an accountable process of doing action research in collaboration with marginal(ised) contingents and committed to social transformation, Isadora explores and expands debates and practices on intersectionality, decolonial methods and ethics and and for climate justice.

[Picture: Ana Rodriguez]