I am honored to submit my candidacy for vice-president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). Since joining in 2016, I have served on the Executive Committee as well as the Program, Best Paper Award, and the Brazil Initiation Scholarship Committees. These experiences have shown me the vital role BRASA plays in advancing Brazilian Studies and fostering connections among scholars and institutions. I am eager to help guide the association into its next chapter, with a focus on expanding its reach, inclusivity, and impact.
My path into Brazilian Studies is deeply personal. I immigrated to the U.S. from Brazil in 2000, and while I built my academic career in the U.S., I have remained closely tied to Brazil—speaking Portuguese at home, traveling frequently, and grounding my scholarship in Brazilian social issues. My PhD dissertation examined the access of Black and Brown students to public universities in Brazil and their performance on entrance exams—an issue close to my heart as a first-generation college student. Since then, my research has continued to focus on Brazil and Latin America, engaging questions of inequality, race, and quality of life.
As vice-president, my leadership will be guided by three priorities:
1. Strengthening support for members—especially students, junior faculty, and scholars at minority-serving institutions;
2. Expanding international connections—building stronger partnerships with Brazilian Studies centers internationally;
3. Deepening BRASA’s engagement beyond academia—ensuring that our scholarship contributes to public debates and reaches broader communities.
BRASA’s vitality depends on the active participation of scholars from diverse backgrounds and career stages. To this end, I will work to expand mentoring networks, create workshops, and develop virtual programming that make Brazilian Studies more accessible, particularly for graduate students and junior faculty in the U.S. and Brazil. I will also prioritize initiatives that reduce barriers to participation—such as travel grants and hybrid conference formats—so that scholars from Brazil, Latin America, and beyond can fully engage regardless of financial resources. I will strengthen ties with Brazilian studies programs at U.S. universities while also encouraging collaboration with institutes across Europe and Latin America. Just as importantly, I want to connect scholars in Brazil with colleagues abroad to foster joint publications in English-language journals and amplify the visibility of their work.
I also believe BRASA must continue to bridge scholarship and public life. As a fellow of the Washington Brazil Office and member of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil, I have worked to connect academic expertise with public discourse. As vice-president, I’ll encourage members to share their work through op-eds, public lectures, and policy briefs, and I’ll seek partnerships with civil society organizations and cultural institutions to amplify the visibility of our community’s research.
I envision a BRASA that reflects the full diversity of Brazil and its diasporas, while connecting scholars across borders and defending the values that sustain intellectual life. My leadership style is collaborative and inclusive: I believe the strength of BRASA lies in its members, and I am committed to listening, amplifying voices, and working together toward our common goals. With your support, I hope to lead BRASA into its next chapter of growth, resilience, and global impact.

I am an Associate Professor of Brazilian Literature at the University of Chicago, where I have been a faculty member for over a decade. I hold a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an MA and BA from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj). My research focuses on environmental humanities in Latin America, with an emphasis on Brazil. I am very interested in the ways in which novels and other cultural objects interact with collective perceptions of environmental change. More recently, I have been working in the energy humanities, and my current research project examines how electricity has affected Brazilian cultural production over the past century.
Although grounded in literary and cultural studies, my research has a strong interdisciplinary component, particularly in dialogue with environmental history. As a founding faculty member of the University of Chicago’s Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization and its current Director of Doctoral Studies, I work across the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences divisions on campus. Likewise, my teaching practice embodies my commitment to thinking about Brazil from a diverse and interdisciplinary perspective, through courses such as a cultural history of the Amazon or a survey of Afro-Brazilian literature.
My involvement with the Brazilian Studies Association began when, as a graduate student, I organized a panel for their biennial conference. Since then, I have served as a member of the Executive Committee and participated in a number of committees and initiatives, including the selection committee for the Roberto Reis Book Award. I value Brasa’s democratic structure, its efforts to foster cutting-edge scholarship, and its deep commitment to remaining welcoming to a range of students and scholars from Brazil, the United States, and elsewhere. If elected, I will continue and expand opportunities for transnational collaboration and support for Brazilian-based scholars.
In times of creeping authoritarianism, when basic notions such as academic freedom and freedom of speech are being questioned and redefined, I am particularly committed to affirming Brasa’s role as an inclusive space where academic and pedagogical freedom are defended as fundamental conditions for our mission as educators and scholars, and where a multiplicity of often divergent points of view are accepted and respected. I am also deeply committed to supporting opportunities for graduate students. Graduate education is a cornerstone of the university system and education more broadly, yet both Brazil and the United States have faced and continue to face budget cuts that weaken its position. I am deeply committed to supporting graduate education in Brazilian Studies through conference travel grants, dissertation awards and other opportunities.  
Brasa’s key role in promoting Brazilian studies within a transnational framework remains as relevant as ever. Focusing on and strengthening the core goals of the association is, in my opinion, the best way to reaffirm the place and importance of our field in these challenging times. This will be my priority as Vice President and President of the association.

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Angela Rodriguez Mooney
Assistant professor
Texas Woman’s University
PhD in Spanish and Portuguese

I am writing to self-nominate for a four-year term on the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), beginning in July 2026 and concluding in 2030.
Since completing my PhD in Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University in 2020, I have been an active participant in the academic community, consistently presenting and attending major conferences and congresses dedicated to Brazilian studies. Now, as I enter my third year as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language, Culture, and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University, I believe I bring the experience, perspective, and dedication needed to make a meaningful contribution to BRASA.
BRASA plays a crucial role in promoting and disseminating scholarship on Brazil, amplifying the global relevance of Brazilian cultural and intellectual production. The organization provides a vital platform for dialogue across disciplines, fostering the exchange of ideas that enrich our field and ensuring that diverse perspectives are represented. For me, joining the Executive Committee is not only a way to give back to the community that has supported my growth, but also an opportunity to strengthen the visibility and impact of Brazilian studies in Texas and across the U.S. South, regions where this work is especially needed.
As reflected in my CV, I bring to this role both extensive scholarly engagement with Brazil and a strong record of service. I have served on multiple committees, reviewed widely for academic journals, and cultivated collaborative relationships with colleagues across the field—connections built not only through professional networks but also through genuine intellectual exchange and personal solidarity. My research centers on Brazil’s cultural productions, with a particular focus on how race, gender, sexuality, and social class are represented.
I would be honored to contribute my expertise, commitment, and regional perspective to BRASA’s mission, and I am eager for the opportunity to serve on the Executive Committee.

Ben Cowan
Professor of History
University of California, San Diego

Ben Cowan received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from UCLA. He has written extensively on right-wing radicalism, morality, sexuality, and authoritarianism in Cold War Brazil, specializing in the cultural and gender history of the post-1964 era. He has written two award-winning books on these topics: Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil (UNC, 2016) and Moral Majorities Across the Americas: Brazil, the United States, and the Creation of the Religious Right (UNC, 2021). He is currently carrying out research for a third project, which focuses on Brazil as a locus for foregrounding South-centered histories of mountaineering and outdoor recreation.
Ben is a staunch advocate of interdisciplinarity as a core aspect of BRASA’s mission and modus operandi. As a BRASA member, he advocates for the visibility of Brazil and Brazilian Studies, especially when it comes to scholarship on gender, sexuality, women, blackness, and other vectors of marginalization and exclusion. On the Executive Committee, Ben would be committed to fostering interdisciplinary dialogues on the critical issues of our moment, especially the rise of fascism, far-right extremism, and the transnational crisis of democracy.  

Benjamin Junge
Professor and Chair
Anthropology Dept.,
State University of New York, New Platz

Benjamin Junge received his PhD from Emory University and is currently Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His research focuses on class identification, family politics, and political subjectivity, drawing on long-term ethnographic work in Porto Alegre and Recife. He is currently a Mecila Senior Fellow at Mecila at CEBRAP (Universidade de São Paulo) and has previously held a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco) and a Wilson Center Fellowship (Brazil Institute). Ben has been a regular presence at BRASA since 2008–as presenter, panel organizer, and discussant–and has also served on the Executive Council of the LASA Brazil Section.
His recent co-authored/co-edited publications include: “‘Fora da Cidade’: Middle-Classness and Geographies of Exclusion for Brazil’s Once-Rising Poor” (J Anthropological Research, 2025), “What Happened to the “New Middle Class”? The 2016 BORP Survey” (Latin American Research Review, 2022), and Democracia Precária: Etnografias de Esperança, Desespero e Resistencia no Brasil (Editora Zouk, 2022).
If elected to the Executive Committee, Ben will focus on: (1) Expanding support for teaching about Brazil outside of Brazil. In 2024 he conducted a baseline survey of educators and presented results at BRASA. He will work to develop an open-access repository of syllabi, video clips, sample readings, and a speaker directory to support inclusive pedagogy across disciplines and regions. (2) Fostering partnerships/collaboration. With extensive experience at Brazilian universities, Ben will support South-North and South-South scholarly exchanges, especially involving public universities and campuses outside elite circuits. (3) Sustaining an inclusive and plural vision of Brazilian Studies. He values the field’s methodological and epistemological diversity and will advocate for multilingual access, structured mentoring, and democratic participation across BRASA’s initiatives.
Ben is committed to equity, academic freedom, and democratic exchange, and would be honored to serve BRASA in this role.

David Mittelman
Associate Professor of Portuguese at the United States Air Force Academy

 
I write to nominate myself for service on BRASA’s Executive Committee. My nomination statement follows below — please let me know if anything more is required.
I am an associate professor of Portuguese at the United States Air Force Academy, where I also serve as the Portuguese program convener (curriculum and instruction lead). I have been a member of BRASA since 2016. My scholarship on Brazilian literature and cinema has been published in Brasil/Brazil, Chasqui, Journal of Lusophone Studies, Romance Quarterly, Transmodernity, and other venues, and my first book, focusing on manifestations of skepticism in Brazilian literature, is under contract with SUNY Press. I am currently developing my next book project, which studies the aesthetics of decolonial salvage in the cultural production of Brazil and the United States. As a faculty member at an undergraduate institution, in addition to courses in Afro-Luso-Brazilian literary and cultural studies, I teach language courses at all levels of our Portuguese program.
As a member of the BRASA Executive Committee I would be particularly interested in advocacy efforts to strengthen our academic community and support our colleagues and students in the face of mounting institutional and political pressures. Given its identity as an interdisciplinary association with members across the U.S., Brazil, and numerous other countries, I believe BRASA has a role to play in promoting transnational scholarship, defending academic freedom, and demonstrating the social and ethical value of the humanities and social sciences. Above all, as a person who has been extremely lucky and privileged to have a career in this field, I am committed to continuing the work BRASA has been doing to support critical approaches to the study of Brazil and to build a more inclusive academic community. Having benefited enormously from my involvement in BRASA, I am keen to ensure that other scholars and students enjoy the same and greater opportunities.

Giulia Riccò
Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Giulia Riccò is Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her Ph.D. in Romance Studies (Italian and Portuguese) from Duke University in 2019, where she began developing her research on transnational connections between Italy and Brazil. Her work brings together modern Italian and Brazilian literature and culture, with a focus on nationalism, migration, and race. Her first book, The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil (Fordham University Press, 2025), argues that Italians first became racialized as white in São Paulo, Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century. By examining how Brazilian racial theorists, writers, and the mainstream press viewed Italians as vectors of whiteness, The Italian Colony of São Paulo proposes that Brazil’s racial model should serve as a starting point for understanding how race—especially whiteness—operates in Italy. Throughout her career, Giulia has worked to expand the visibility of Lusophone cultures on campus and beyond. She has served on the Brazil Initiative Advisory Committee for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, reviewed FLAS fellowships supporting Portuguese study, and designed interdisciplinary courses that highlight Brazilian content. She believes that at a moment when language programs face growing challenges, advocating for the study of Portuguese and Brazilian literature is both an ethical and moral obligation. If elected to the BRASA Executive Committee, Giulia will seek to foster cross-institutional collaborations along the lines of the Big Ten Academic model to ensure that Portuguese and Brazilian literature remain accessible to students everywhere. Giulia envisions BRASA as a space to rethink the place of Brazil within a transnational, multilingual framework and to demonstrate that by working collectively and creatively across linguistic and regional boundaries, we can strengthen our disciplines and affirm the enduring relevance of modern languages and literatures in higher education.

Jamie Lee Andreson
Assistant Professor of History
Department of Humanities
Simmons University

I am passionate about bridgework between Brazil and the U.S. and facilitating international connections between scholars, students, writers, publishers, and professors beyond national borders. Through my experiences studying in graduate school in Brazil, doing translations and publishing in English and Portuguese, my work aims to reach across audiences and make esoteric knowledge more acceptable to broad publics. Through institutional building, public humanities projects, and navigating already established networks, I hope to foster spaces of collaboration and intellectual production that push forward community building and knowledge acquisition across differences. With a non-competitive approach that advocates for career growth and professional development for junior scholars, I would work for BRASA to be a supportive network with opportunities that help push forward the global project for Brazilian Studies everywhere.

John A. Mundell
Visiting Assistant Professor in African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis

John A. Mundell, Ph.D. (he/him) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. An interdisciplinary scholar of Black queer studies and critical whiteness in Latin America and the Luso-Atlantic world, his research examines blackness, gender, and sexuality in literature and popular culture from an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on narratives of race mixture and Black diasporic exchange in nation-building projects. His book manuscript under review with University of California Press, Longing for a Racial Democracy: Interracial Intimacies and Popular Culture in Brazil, re-centers sex and desire in Brazil’s myth of racial democracy through literature, music, performance, film, television, and digital media. His published and forthcoming work appears in Luso-Brazilian Review, Latin American & Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Palimpsest. He works as a translator of Black literature and Black studies between Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and his English translation of Mayra Santos-Febres’ novel, Faith in Disguise (Fe en disfraz), is forthcoming in spring 2026 with Vanderbilt University Press, with other translations in process. He co-founded and directs the Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean working group that serves as a writing and co-mentorship hub for junior scholars working at the intersection of Black Studies and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies; and he is a core member of the Saudade: Toward a Luso-Afro-Brazilian Genealogy of Longing and Furacão Race and Brazilian Studies working groups. BRASA has been central to John’s professional and personal growth, providing networks and mentorship that have shaped his career. Serving on the Executive Board would be an opportunity to contribute leadership, service, and learning in gratitude for what BRASA has given him. His recent experience with the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) has prepared him for this role: as a member of both the conference and local arrangements committees for the 2025 St. Louis biennial conference, he reviewed proposals in multiple languages, organized panels, drafted invitation letters for international scholars seeking U.S. visas, and corresponded directly with applicants. He also built partnerships with museums, Black-owned businesses, restaurants, artists, and activist networks to integrate the conference with local communities, while serving as ASWAD’s official Spanish- and Portuguese-language translator. Through this work, John has honed skills in conference planning, multilingual communication, and community engagement that he is eager to bring to BRASA to foster scholarship, collaboration, and community across Brazil, the Americas, and beyond.

Leonora Souza Paula
Assistant Professor, Literary Studies and Latin American Studies
Michigan State University

As an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, I specialize in Literary Studies and Latin American Studies, with a focus on intersections of race, gender, urban culture, and memory in contemporary Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Diasporic culture. My current research examines the role of Black feminist spatial imagination in claiming literature and culture as heritage recovery and epistemic reparation. This work informs my broader commitment to digital archiving, community engagement, and transnational advocacy.
I co-founded the AfroFutures Now Digital Archive, a multilingual platform that curates Black women’s intellectual histories and was featured at the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in 2025. My global engagement includes invited participation in high-level United Nations forums, including the Summit of the Future and multiple sessions of the Permanent Forum. My public scholarship has reached international audiences through GWL Voices, Geledés, and the Washington Brazil Office, amplifying Afro-Brazilian feminist perspectives in global policy dialogues.
My work has been recognized with the ACLS Fellowship, Vital Voices Visionaries Fellowship, and multiple institutional awards for excellence in diversity, equity, and community engagement, including Michigan State University’s Excellence in DEI Award and the Inspiration Award from the Center for Gender in Global Context.
I have published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and I actively curate panels and conferences that foreground decolonial methodologies and Afro-Brazilian feminist thought. As a BRASA member, I am committed to fostering inclusive, community-engaged scholarship and supporting emerging scholars. I would be honored to contribute to BRASA’s mission by amplifying historically marginalized voices and cultivating global dialogue.

Lígia Bezerra
Associate Professor of Portuguese Arizona State University

I was born in Várzea Alegre, Ceará, Brazil and moved to the United States in 2006, where I completed a master’s in Portuguese at the University of New Mexico and a doctorate in Portuguese with a minor in cultural studies at Indiana University. I also hold a master’s in linguistics from Universidade Federal do Ceará. I taught Portuguese and English language and linguistics in Brazil and have taught Portuguese and Spanish language, Lusophone literature and culture, and Latin American literature and culture in the United States. My research interests include consumption, everyday life, neoliberalism, and democracy. I have published articles in journals such as Chasqui, Journal of Lusophone Studies, Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, Luso-Brazilian Review, and Cultural Studies. My book, Everyday Consumption in Twenty-First-Century Brazilian Fiction (Purdue University Press, 2022), is the first in-depth study to map out the representation of consumption in contemporary Brazilian prose, highlighting how our interactions with commodities connect seemingly disconnected areas of everyday life, such as eating habits, the growth of prosperity theology, and ideas of success and failure. I am writing a second book, which focuses on how Brazilian Popular Music articulates resistance to anti-democratic forces in the twenty-first century. Through my research, I started participating in BRASA conferences when I was a graduate student and am grateful for all the opportunities the association’s conference has afforded me as I have advanced in my career. As a member of BRASA’s executive committee, I would be honored to contribute to the association’s mission, helping to build community and to continue to open doors for future generations of scholars in the area of Brazilian Studies.

Luca Bacchini
Associate Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literature at Sapienza
University of Rome

Luca Bacchini is Associate Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literature at Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). He is co-founder and co-director of the environmental humanities laboratory “EcoLogosLab” (Sapienza/Stanford University) and member of the “Projeto República: núcleo de pesquisa, documentação e memória” (Federal University of Minas Gerais). Since 2023, he has been a member of the executive committee of the Association of Brazilianists in Europe (ABRE), serving as Executive Director of organizational activities.
Before arriving at Sapienza, he taught and conducted research in the field of Brazilian studies in Europe and the United States: Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna (Italy), Research Fellow of the “Brazil Initiative” program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Visiting Professor at Stanford University. Among his most recent publications are the anthologies Maestro Soberano. Ensaios sobre Tom Jobim (Ufmg, 2017) and Literature Beyond the Human. Post-Anthropocentric Brazil (with Victoria Saramago; Routledge, 2023). He is currently completing a book on Chico Buarque de Hollanda’s exile in Italy and working on the Italian edition of Patrícia Galvão’s literary works.
He first attended a BRASA conference in 2012, and since then the association has been a constant reference point in his career, providing him with scientific inspiration, a network of contacts, and great friends. If he is elected to the BRASA executive committee, his goal will be to contribute, above all, to strengthening academic and cultural relations with Europe and its community of Brazilianists.

Naomi Wood
Professor of Portuguese
Colorado College

I am the founder of the Portuguese language program at Colorado College (CC), have over ten years’ experience leading study abroad trips to Salvador, Bahia, and a research profile focused on LGBTQ (bixa, sapatão, travesti) visual and performing artists. Through my fifteen years at CC I have been an ambassador on my campus in my conference subfield at NWSA for Brazilian Studies. And, in particular, I am a strong advocate for understanding regionalisms, racism, and cultural production of the northeast region to help diversify the broader understanding of Brazil as presented in popular media. This was an underlying theme in my edited volume Brazil in Twenty-First Century Popular Media: Culture, Politics, and Nationalism on the World Stage.
I have earned Full Professor position at my institution, completed a five-year term as chair, founded and run the local Mobile Arts Program in Colorado Springs, CO, and have valuable professional experiences to contribute to the community of executive committee members. At this point in my career, I want to participate in the EC and learn from other Brazilian Studies scholars working to make BRASA an inclusive space and to uphold the academic rigor of this association. I have been a member of BRASA throughout my graduate and professional career and am grateful for the conference and broader community and the committee members who have made those spaces possible.

Rafael Loris
Professor of Latin American and Brazilian History and Politics
University of Denver

I am writing to propose my name as a member of the Executive Committee of BRASA. I am Professor of Latin American and Brazilian History and Politics at the University of Denver, and my work covers multiple aspects of that country’s challenging and fascinating historical trajectory. My research is mostly centered on the debates and associated domestic and international projects of development promotion that Brazilian political, intellectual, and cultural elites carried in the second half of the twentieth century. And as a Brazilianist originally from Brazil, I see myself as in a conducive position to reflect on these matters from a comparative, critical perspective.  
Since becoming aware of the existence of this important and active organization, I have remained interested in its special mission. In my view, BRASA has proven to be space for academics of (& from) Brazil to exchange knowledge and expertise, provide mentoring to young professionals and students, and support one another, especially in times of great need; all in all, fostering a vibrant and uniquely valuable community of scholars now recognized in the US, Brazil, and beyond.
In a time when academic work, and even academic freedoms, are facing new challenges in Brazil and in the United States, BRASA’s work is even more necessary and deserving to be supported. Over the years, I have tried, as much as possible, to be supportive of BRASA’s many valuable efforts. I am now in a position where I could become more involved in the Association, if possible as member of the Executive Committee.

Antonio Rediver Guizzo
Associate Professor
Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA)
Area of Letras/Literatura/Literary Studies

Antonio Rediver Guizzo, PhD in Letters from the State University of Western Paraná (2014), postdoctoral researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, and associate professor at the Federal University for Latin American Integration (UNILA). I ​​lead the research group Latin American Imaginaries (ILA), which aims to articulate investigations focused on understanding the imaginaries manifested in Latin American arts, and I am a CNPq Productivity Fellow – PQ-2 for the project “Between gigs, apps and coaches: representations of the contemporary world of work in Latin American literature (focus: Brazil/Argentina)”. I also served as coordinator of the Postgraduate Program in Comparative Literature from 2016 to 2020 and as General Coordinator of EDUNILA – the publishing house of the Federal University for Latin American Integration – from 2021 to 2023. I am also a member of the Area Advisory Committee (CAA) of the Araucária Foundation for Support of Scientific and Technological Development of the State of Paraná.
I have been working in Higher Education since 2010, and I have experience in both research, with different funded projects over time, and in the academic management of courses, coordination of international events, and publishing. My candidacy for the BRASA Executive Committee has the central intention of contributing to the promotion of studies on Brazil, an activity that I have already carried out through participation in congresses and the establishment of agreements with other institutions. Furthermore, my research is eminently interdisciplinary, spanning different areas of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the institution where I work is dedicated to promoting studies and international cooperation projects, especially among Latin American countries or study centers focused on Latin American issues.
In this sense, I believe I can contribute to the planning and execution of congresses and other BRASA activities, because in addition to my experience in organizing and coordinating events and teams, I also have a sincere intention to contribute academically to the projection of Brazilian studies on the international stage.

Paula Silva
Professor
Department of Sociology
Universidade Federal da Bahia

I would like to declare my interest in participating in the Executive Committee of BRASA, whose term will begin in July 2026. I have great admiration for the proposal of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) and have already participated in several editions of the congresses, either presenting papers or in Roundtables. The themes I have addressed in these Congresses express well what my academic and intellectual production has been, dealing with racism and affirmative action (2004, Rio de Janeiro; 2010, Brasília), student and faculty mobility in cooperation projects between Brazil and the United States (2006, Nashville, where I also completed my post-doctoral studies), gender and intersectionality (2014, London; 2016, Providence; 2018, Rio de Janeiro), and female leadership in Capoeira Angola (2008, New Orleans). In these last three Congresses, my participation took place in Roundtables. In New Orleans, I acted as Coordinator, and the Roundtable was followed by a capoeira circle with the participation of many women, including the presenters. I am a Full Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of Bahia and have extensive experience in institutional work at the Brazilian Sociological Society, where I coordinated the Research Committee on the Sociology of Ethnic-Racial Relations from 2013 to 2025, and was part of the board in the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 terms. I am certain that at this point in my career, I can contribute significantly to the Brazilian Studies Association based on these previous experiences in institutional work and the transnational networks I have built, especially with colleagues from Brazil and the United States, but also from other countries in the Global South. My work as an anti-racist and feminist activist, and founder of the Nzinga Capoeira Angola Group, which has been in existence for 30 years, will also enrich my work at the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA).

Sheyla Castro Diniz
Researcher and Collaborating Professor
Department of History at FFLCH/USP

I am a Professor and collaborating Researcher in the Department of History at FFLCH/USP, where I recently completed, with a FAPESP scholarship, the postdoctoral project “Metá Metá: sociocultural knowledge through contemporary song”. A sociologist and musician, with a master’s and doctorate from Unicamp, I conduct research on Brazilian popular music from the 1960s to the present, with an emphasis on the relationships between recorded music, politics, modernism, youth, experimentalism, and the Afro-diaspora. I was a visiting researcher at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France, 2013-2014) and at Tulane University (USA, 2024-2025). Among other works, I am the author of the book “De Tudo que a Gente Sonhou: Amigos e Canções do Clube da Esquina” (Intermeios/Fapesp, 2017) and the thesis “Desbundados e Marginais: MPB e Contracultura nos Anos de Chumbo (1969–1974)”, currently under review for publication. At USP, I work on consolidating the research line “Sociology of Music” and coordinate the extension project “Seminars on Listening and Studies in Popular Music”.
As a member of BRASA since 2012, I have been able to establish dialogues with researchers from various countries, participate in qualified debates about contemporary Brazil, improve my research, and internationalize its results. The international circulation and visibility that BRASA congresses provide have brought important gains to my academic career, which motivates my candidacy for the Executive Committee, in order to reciprocate and contribute to initiatives that strengthen the Association’s objectives. I will seek to promote artistic and cultural activities at the biennial congresses; To stimulate funding opportunities for the participation of Brazilian graduate students and researchers; to encourage the involvement of activist intellectuals in order to bridge theory and social practice; to value racial and gender diversity; to assist with bureaucratic tasks; and to expand dissemination channels.
I will participate in the congress in Salvador (2026), and I am excited about the possibility of joining the BRASA Executive Committee to work on these proposals and collaborate in the organization of the 2028 and 2030 congresses.