I have an academic trajectory at the intersection of ethnographic studies among Indigenous Peoples from lowland South America with Medical Anthropology.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil; a Master's degree in Social Anthropology from UFRGS, and a PhD in Social Anthropology also from UFRGS. Half of my PhD was carried out at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale (LAS), in Paris, France.

Since 2003, I have been carrying out several ethnographic studies among the Guarani-Mbyá Indigenous People from lowland South America. With more than 18 years of ethnographic fieldwork experience, I have made theoretical and methodological contributions to the fields of body, personhood, Indigenous conception of health and living well. My first book, based on my PhD thesis, “From instability and Mbyá affects: pacifying relations, taming others” was launched in 2019 by UFCSPA Press. Especially in this work, I aimed to contribute theoretically to understanding the production of difference and otherness within pairs such as man/woman,living/dead, indigenous/non-Indigenous People from the Guarani-Mbyá point of view. For that, I concentrated my studies in the new developments in the theory of predation and the production of the person. Currently I continue to work with the Guarani-Mbyá people, but I have a wide interest focused: (1) on Indigenous women’s health, mainly birthing, childbirth and its medicalisation; (2) on Tuberculosis (TB) and co-related immunodeficiency diseases such as Covid and HIV; (3) on embodied inequalities of the Anthropocene with focus on Indigenous understandings of the end of the world; and (4) on academic discussions related to decoloniality and global health (or an “after” global health) with that of political ecologies of land and body from Indigenous women’s perspective.

Before joining the Department of Anthropology at UCL, I have hold the following posts and fellowship:

2014 - 2022 Permanent Adjunct Professor in Anthropology of Health at Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA).

2020 - 2022 Research Fellow in Medical Anthropology at City University of London CUoL

2018 - 2020 Newton International Fellowship (Newton Fund and British Academy) at City University of London CUoL

I am currently a Collaborator Professor at the Postgraduate Programme of Social Anthropology at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. There I teach to and supervise Master and PhD students.