CV Summary

For more than a decade, since 2007, I have been building up a relevant body of ethnographic knowledge mainly focused on Senegal and other countries in the region. My approach is multidisciplinary and although I'm mainly focused in academic work I have also produced work in video and photography. I have conducted long-term ethnography (3+ years) and I have been shaping my scientific activity around a couple of main concerns like the relation of West African societies with externalized ideological conudrums and interventions, mainly in postcolonial times, but also going back to the colonial epoch. I have taken interest in development, technology and lately in human rights. I'm interested in how these 'languages' and discourses become vernacularized and are translated into practice, catalysing (and often imposing) social change or finding multilayered resistances, culturally and politically Concretely, my main domains of specialization are Anthropology, African Studies and Human Rights. I graduated in Anthropology in 2005 and until 2009 I have had several experiences on the domain of development, water politics, migration and rural sustainability in a drought stricken area in northern Senegal, namely volunteering work in 2007 and the shooting and direction of the research documentary Waalo Waalo. From 2009 until 2016, while producing my PhD thesis I focused, in the same region, on the appropriation of technology (particularly ICTs), and how these not only represent new tools for communication but also a greater degree of exposure to global trends, bringing with them new spaces of autonomy but also suspicion. It was also during the PhD that I became interested in gender issues, intergenerational relations and social change. In 2016 when I was granted the PhD in African Studies I started working as a project manager in a research-action project focused on FGM/C, subject on which I have specialized since then. My current general research interests focus areas such as: Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Violence Against Women, FGM/C, Human Rights, Body Politics, Sexuality. I'm also particularly interested in situating this research in West Africa and focus: youth sexuality, FGM/C and homophobia, making use of a regional focus. West African societies present many similarities, but also differences which I believe should be considered together, for both historical reasons and present day interconnectedness. I have also, in parallel, been invested in Documentary film and Photography since 2005. I have acquired several competencies in both these areas: technical and artistic. Both are complementary to research but both are also independent of research, configuring several side projects like the documentary 'Waalo Waalo' (2007-2009) and the on-going project 'Yoon' (2017 - ...), and other smaller projects.

Academic Qualifications
University/Institution Type Degree Period
ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
PhD Estudos Africanos 2016
ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Licenciate Antropologia 2005
Research Interests
Anthropology
African Studies
West Africa
Sexual and Reproductive Rights
Gender