Welcome!
I am an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Political Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Delaware (2022). I was born and raised in Brazil, where I went to the Federal University of Minas Gerais for my Bachelors’s and Masters’s degrees.
I am sensitive to issues of diversity in higher education, and I believe the inclusion of a wide range of voices is crucial for effective academic and research programs and in the process of creating awareness of global issues. As a scholar, I believe in the significance of lived experiences in knowledge production and I see activism as a bridge between understanding power dynamics and socio-political transformation in different localities. By using interpretivist methodologies, my work explores how power dynamics have effects that go beyond the individuals, feeding into different systems of oppression. In my scholarship, as well as in my teaching, I employ critical analytical lenses in order to be attentive to local contexts and intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality, ability, and others.
I have diversity, interdisciplinarity, and social justice as core values of my research and teaching ethics. In my work, I look at the intersection of sports and politics in a distinctive way, exploring why and how are sports political, with a focus on feminist activism emerging around soccer in Brazil in recent years. I seek to understand the ways in which these women’s and feminist groups challenge the masculine dominance in soccer spaces and how it’s connected to a broader political agenda. Thus, in understanding soccer as political, it is also a space for political organizing.
I am highly involved in academic service, having occupied different elective and appointed positions in and outside the Department of Political Science and International Relations. I have experience working with the Institute for Global Studies (IGS) at the University of Delaware, coordinating different academic programs funded by the U.S. Department of State and serving as a liaison between the program and government organizations, members of the community, and guest lecturers.
On this website, you can access my CV, my current work, and my contact information.
If you want to learn more about me, read the extended version of my bio here.