Leadership & Governance

Ana Paula Alves Ribeiro is an anthropologist and professor at Rio de Janeiro State University. Her work spans visual and urban anthropology, Black cinema, Afro-Brazilian culture, museums, education, and ethnic-racial public policy. She coordinates the Museu AfroDigital Rio de Janeiro and brings extensive experience in research, curatorship, and professional associations.

Kristal Bivona is Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University. Her research examines Brazilian visual culture, cinema, political memory, and digital humanities. She created SDSU’s Brazilian Studies degree program and produces the Digital Brazil Project.

Vanessa Castañeda is Assistant Professor of Afro-Latin American Studies at Davidson College. Her interdisciplinary research centers on Bahia’s baianas de acarajé, Black women’s labor, cultural heritage, and grassroots political agency. Her work draws on community-based ethnography and longstanding collaboration with the National Association of Baianas.

Paulo Dutra is Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Spanish at the University of New Mexico. His research and creative work engage Brazilian rap, race in Machado de Assis, and contemporary Afro-Brazilian poetry. He is also a poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Cadernos Negros and books published by Malê.

Seth Garfield is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His scholarship focuses on Indigenous studies, environmental history, migration, frontiers, and the histories of food and drugs in Brazil. He has directed major Brazilian and historical studies programs and serves in leadership roles for several scholarly publications.

Marc Hertzman is Professor of History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research examines the African diaspora, music, race, Indigenous history, and regional histories of Brazil. A longtime BRASA participant and former co-editor of Luso-Brazilian Review, he has promoted interdisciplinary exchange and opportunities for emerging scholars.

Livio Sansone is Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia, where he directs the Factory of Ideas Program and coordinates the Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Heritage. His research addresses race, ethnicity, African diasporas, intellectual exchange, and South-South connections across Brazil, Africa, and Europe.

Lígia Bezerra is Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies at Arizona State University, where she directs the Portuguese program. Her research covers Lusophone and Latin American literature and culture, consumption, everyday life, neoliberalism, music, and democracy. She has participated in BRASA since her years as a graduate student.

Benjamin Cowan is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. His work examines right-wing radicalism, morality, sexuality, religion, and authoritarianism in modern Brazil and the Americas. His book Moral Majorities Across the Americas received BRASA’s Roberto Reis Book Award in 2022.

Sheyla Castro Diniz is a sociologist, musician, and researcher affiliated with the University of São Paulo. Her scholarship examines Brazilian popular music, politics, modernism, youth, experimentalism, and the African diaspora from the 1960s to the present. She has been a BRASA member since 2012.

Tassiana Moura de Oliveira is Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Law at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her research examines courts, social policy, inequality, democracy, and representation in Brazil. She also supports Afro-Brazilian scholars through Negritude no PhD and helps lead the Kilomba Collective.

Leonora Souza Paula is Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. Her research brings together literary and Latin American studies, race, gender, urban culture, memory, and Afro-Brazilian feminist thought. She co-founded the AfroFutures Now Digital Archive and works across digital archiving, community engagement, and transnational public scholarship.

Alejandro Ramirez is a doctoral student in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on tourism, globalization, gender, digital life, and Brazil. A former Fulbright researcher at UFBA, he represents graduate students and promotes connections across disciplines, generations, countries, and languages.

Victoria Saramago is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. Her research examines modern and contemporary Latin American literature, especially Brazil, through ecocriticism, environmental and energy humanities, and theories of fiction. Her work explores how cultural representations shape understandings of forests, development, and environmental change.

Paula Silva is Professor of Sociology at the Federal University of Bahia. Her work addresses racism, affirmative action, academic mobility, gender, intersectionality, and women’s leadership in Capoeira Angola. A longtime BRASA participant, she also brings extensive leadership experience in the Brazilian Sociological Society and transnational scholarly networks.