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ANA PAULA MARCELINO DA SILVA
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Aging in a Long-Term Care Institution- Between a past of Histories and the present of Care
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Asesor : MARCIA REIS LONGHI
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Fecha: 16-sep-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This thesis investigates the multidimensional reality of elderly people who live in a Long-Term Care Institution (LTCI) by examining the relationship between the aging process of institutionalized elderly people, the notion of personhood and the various ways in which the concept of Care is operationalized by the different social actors who live and work in this institution. Drawing on a methodological design based on participant observation and other methodological tools from the field of Social Sciences - such as semi-structured interviews - the thesis presents narratives organized around these three central themes, connecting the everyday experiences of elderly people with diverse life histories to the ways in which the Notion of Care is articulated within the institution by elderly residents, healthcare professionals who work there, and other staff members. Beyond the narrative aspects, this thesis presents important discussions of ethical and methodological issues that are of particular relevance to Anthropology and examines how these questions can be integrated into the discussion of Care itself, one of the central points of the thesis. The limitations of ethnographic tools when working with interlocutors with dementia, historical aspects of the space in which the institution operates and other questions are also addressed in this thesis. With regard to elderly people and the multiple aging processes, the thesis brings up discussions about autonomy, lack of being heard, relationships to medication, the ways in which biographical factors shape the institution's routine. In summary, this thesis seeks to unveil how the aging process is a territory of constant disputes and negotiations over Care, accentuated by the rigid routines of the institutional context.
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VITÓRIA TAVARES DE AMARAL SOUSA
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Asesor : ESTEVAO MARTINS PALITOT
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Fecha: 31-ago-2026
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Hora: 15:00
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This research investigates the intersections between religious racism, African-matrix
religions, and public policies in the Cariri region of Ceará, taking the cities of Crato and
Juazeiro do Norte as its empirical locus. The study aims to analyze how terreiro
communities attach meaning to their trajectories and formulate resistance strategies
against the structural and symbolic violence directed at their practices, in a region
marked by the hegemony of popular Catholicism and religious pilgrimages. From an
anthropological and anti-racist perspective, the theoretical-methodological framework is
grounded in ethnography and oral history through the lens of Alessandro Portelli ,
engaging with authors such as Sidnei Nogueira, Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, Sueli
Carneiro, Reginaldo Prandi, James Clifford, and Fredrik Barth. The dissertation is
structured into three complementary chapters: the first, of a conceptual nature, is
dedicated to the analysis of religious racism and the symbolic and legal disputes
surrounding this category; the second provides a socio-historical contextualization of
African-matrix religions in Cariri, integrating data on the black movement's actions and
the mapping of Afro-Brazilian houses in the territory; the third and final chapter, of a
situational and ethnographic nature, analyzes concrete cases of religious racism,
ongoing counter-policies, and forms of collective mobilization, highlighting the March
for Religious Freedom held in Juazeiro do Norte. The results indicate that while
religious racism operates in a multidimensional manner in the region, community
organization and street actions reveal crucial strategies for guaranteeing human rights,
political visibility, and reaffirming the central agency of terreiro peoples in the
decolonization of knowledge and the Cariri territory.
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BERNARDO AMERICO BATISTA TAVARES
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Image fever: image restitution practices in photographic collections concerning dam-affected populations in Paraíba
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Asesor : JOAO MARTINHO BRAGA DE MENDONCA
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Fecha: 31-ago-2026
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Hora: 09:00
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This work proposes to reflect upon and analyze ethnographic research involving photographic collections of populations affected by the Argemiro Dantas Dam in the State ofParaíba. Based on a Visual Anthropology extension project developed between 2020 and 2026, the investigation focuses on the process of shared organization and cataloging of photographic collections alongside the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB-PB) and residents of the Cajá (Itatuba) and Pedro Velho (Aroeiras) communities. Using the methodology of Visual Anthropology, I analyze how the image is articulated as a form of social and political mobilization of memory through processes of restitution and the return of collections in different expressive mediabanners, booklets, and photographic exhibitions. Throughout the dissertation, I discuss how such processes and extension practices simultaneously promote the right to memory for historically silenced groups and an ethical, continuous exercise of returning scientific research. Considering the photographic archive and the ethnographic practices involved in the research, I aim to understand how the restitution and the negotiations of these returns can establish social agency within the receiving group, as it utilizes them as a form of social and political mobilization of its collective memory. I propose, through the notion of 'image fever' (a concept inspired by Derrida, Samain, Benjamin, and Didi-Huberman), to understand how the image, while being a form that thinks, is also a form that wounds, disturbs, and produces other and new thoughts, simultaneously being symptom and agony, event and collapse
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MIRIAN JOSSETTE DE SOUSA OLIVEIRA
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The Potters of São José Neighborhood: An Ethnographic Study of Ceramic Production and Textile Art in Paraíba
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Asesor : FABIO MURA
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Fecha: 31-ago-2026
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Hora: 09:00
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This research is an ethnographic study of the sociotechnical processes of the Loiceiras do bairro São José, located in the city of Cajazeiras, in the Alto Sertão region of Paraíba, Brazil. The investigation focuses on the clay embroidery techniques practiced by the group, which constitute an intersection between ceramic production and textile art. Based on this knowledge, the study examines the connections between the sociotechnical aspects involved in the search for and preparation of clay, shaping, perforation, firing, and embroidery of the pieces. Themes such as territory and environment, kinship relations, art, tradition, and knowledge emerge as intrinsic elements of their everyday work.
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GABRIELA DE FREITAS XAVIER
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Lives and Voices on the Margins: an etnography of the social and political participation of children from the Porto do Capim community in João Pessoa
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Asesor : FLAVIA FERREIRA PIRES
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Fecha: 28-ago-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This study examines the everyday life of children in Porto do Capim, a riverine and urban community in João Pessoa, Brazil, approaching them as political, social, and cultural actors and as rights-holding subjects engaged in the defense of their right to remain in their territory. Located on the banks of the Sanhauá River, in the Varadouro neighborhood, Porto do Capim is a historically significant area considered the cradle of Paraíba's history marked by territorial disputes, processes of exclusion, and social invisibility, and remains a recurring target of revitalization projects that disregard residents' affective ties to the place. Fieldwork included following events such as a cultural gymkhana, after-school tutoring sessions, and music classes between 2024 and 2025. Grounded in mobile ethnographies and drawing on participant observation and floating observation, this research sets out to analyze how children interact with the community's everyday life and how their play, voices, and occupation of space constitute political action. The presence of the author's preadolescent daughter in the field proved fundamental to the outcome of the study: her company facilitated communication and closeness with the children, enabling a domestication of the gaze, and opened analytical perspectives that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. In conclusion, the study found that, although frequently excluded from formal decision-making processes, children's voices echo as resistance and agency, shaping family and communal life by turning ordinary space into a territory of self-affirmation.
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IANAH MAIA DE MELLO
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TITLE: POETICS OF (RE)EXISTENCE: Artistic practices as ethnographic tools, from the diaspora of the Tapuia peoples of Rio Grande do Norte.
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Asesor : JOAO MARTINHO BRAGA DE MENDONCA
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Fecha: 25-ago-2026
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Hora: 09:00
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In this dissertation, I propose to conduct a multi-sited ethnography
(MARCUS, 1995) of artistic practices, through a qualitative approach, based on
experiences lived in dialogue with my family, with the practices of artisans from the
Tapuia Tarairiú Indigenous community of Lagoa do Tapará (RN, Brazil), and with the
work of the Maya artist Luis May Ku. The connection among these universes lies in
the ways such artists use art as a practice of re-existencethat is, as an instrument for
identity affirmation and/or the perpetuation of collective memory in the face of colonial
erasure (ACHINTE, 2009). The methodology is grounded in participant observation,
open interviews, and memory elicitation through creative processes. The results will be
analyzed in light of the Anthropology of Art, aiming to describe the relationships
between artistic practices and languages, on the one hand, and family, ancestry,
memory, and diaspora, on the other.
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DEISE DE JESUS MARQUES
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THE PRODUCTION OF INDIGENOUS INVISIBILITY IN THE FLOW OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: a perspective from the anthropology of law and conflict on the frictions between the field and institutional artefacts in Paraíba
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Asesor : ESTEVAO MARTINS PALITOT
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Fecha: 21-ago-2026
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Hora: 15:00
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The initial investigation into the category of culture in criminal trials involving
Indigenous people in Paraíba revealed the phenomenon of the production of Indigenous
invisibility within the flow of the criminal justice system. The methodology unfolded in
two simultaneous stages: fieldwork in Potiguara villages and the ethnography of
documents originating from technical activities of the Court of Justice of Paraíba and
other institutions intertwined in the networks of the penal system. Given the friction
between the field and the artefacts, the core of the microanalysis focused on Law No.
6,001/1973, the Indian Statute, a legislative apparatus in which the term silvícola
finds legal backing to perpetuate, in penal courts, a petrified and essentialist view of the
Indigenous person. To this end, the study adopts the situational analysis method,
extending its gaze beyond the strict field and mobilising the concept of villagearchive in order to locate and anthropologically analyse the main sociotechnical
piece that materialises the conflict: a habeas corpus. The theoretical contributions
derive from Social Anthropology, the Anthropology of Law and Conflict (Anthropology
of Law), and the Anthropology of Technique, with an archaeological approach,
engaging with authors such as Barth, Cardoso de Oliveira, Pacheco de Oliveira, Palitot,
Krenak, Milanez, Kant de Lima, Moreira da Silva, Davis, Geertz, Leroi-Gourhan, and
Tim Ingold, following the hermeneutic tracks of Gadamer. The results point toward
another structural and profound phenomenon that guides the state bureaucracy and
perpetuates itself in contemporary criminal trials: anti-Indigenous racism.
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FRANCIEL DOS SANTOS NUNES
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Between the Mangrove and the Asphalt: An ethnography of social transformations in the fishing community of Barra do Camaratuba-PB
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Asesor : PATRICIA ALVES RAMIRO
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Fecha: 17-ago-2026
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Hora: 09:00
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This study investigates the contemporary social transformations in the fishing community of Barra do Camaratuba, a district of Mataraca, on the Northern Coast of Paraíba. The village, whose origins date back to the presence of a subsistence economy based on artisanal fishing and its geographical position bordering the Potiguara indigenous lands (Lagoa do Mato Village), has experienced an intense process of economic and territorial transformations in recent decades, especially due to the development of tourism. This work aims to analyze artisanal fishing in Brazil and, specifically, how this practice manifests itself in Barra do Camaratuba, adopting an ethnographic approach to reconstruct the village's history and examine the contemporary social transformations that reconfigure it. We start from the hypothesis that artisanal fishers, as a historically central social group, constitute a vantage point for accessing the tensions that permeate the community. The methodology is based on ethnographic fieldwork, grounded in participant observation and "direct contact" with local residents. Data production is centered on informal conversations and the collection of oral testimonies and life histories from long-time residents, fishers, and local tourism agents. Documentary analysis focuses on the legislation governing fishing activities, especially the laws and ordinances that establish the closed season (defeso) and the closed-season unemployment benefit (seguro defeso) (Law No. 10.779/2003 and Law No. 11.959/2009), which act as important regulators of the local economy. The analysis of oral narratives reveals a complex scenario: a memory of the "old Barra" characterized by subsistence (fishing/small-scale farming), safety, religious traditions, and southward migrations as a labor alternative. This memory is confronted by transformations, such as the arrival of the paved road, seen as a "Ground Zero" by an interlocutor, the emergence of new socio-environmental conflicts (such as the closure of access to the Pavuna Lagoon attributed to the wind farms), and the weakening of traditional community ties.
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RAISSA TAIMILLES VALERIO PAIVA DE SOUZA
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FROM SUMMONERS RIFT TO JOÃO PESSOA: GENDER, SOCIABILITY, AND CONTESTATIONS IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
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Fecha: 30-jun-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This thesis analyzes the experiences of women League of Legends players in
João Pessoa, Paraíba, seeking to understand how gender relations shape the
construction of sociability in digital and face-to-face environments connected to
electronic games. Drawing on the perspective of Social Anthropology and on
studies of gender, technology, and digital culture, the research investigates how
women negotiate their permanence in a space historically marked by male
predominance, as well as the strategies they mobilize to confront situations of
harassment, exclusion, and symbolic violence. Methodologically, the study is
grounded in ethnography, combining participant observation in online and offline
environments, the monitoring of WhatsApp and Discord groups, participation in
in-person events and competitions, the application of questionnaires, and
semi-structured interviews with women players. The results show that League
of Legends constitutes more than a space of entertainment, as it emerges as an
environment of sociability in which relations of belonging, friendship,
recognition, and conflict are produced. The analyses demonstrate that
harassment directed at women is not restricted to individual or episodic
behavior, but is part of broader social structures that reproduce gender
inequalities present in society. At the same time, the research reveals the
existence of forms of resistance constructed by the players themselves,
including the creation of support networks, women-only groups, and strategies
for managing their own presence in the digital environment. The thesis shows
that digital games are not separated from social life, but rather articulate online
and offline relations in which symbolic disputes, bonds of sociability,
experiences of violence, and forms of belonging among women players are
reproduced and reconfigured.
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ELIZANGELA FERREIRA DA SILVA
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BETWEEN CAREGIVING, WORK AND THE PEN: An analysis of the triple burden faced by women in Adult Education (EJA) in João Pessoa, Paraíba
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Fecha: 30-jun-2026
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Hora: 10:00
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This text presents doctoral research investigating the main factors of school dropout among women, analyzing how social demands related to female roles influence their trajectories. The research followed women in Adult Education programs at three public schools in the city of João Pessoa, highlighting situations of extreme vulnerability, difficulty completing their schooling, informal work, domestic violence, and inequalities of gender, race, and class. The study discusses how oppression and violence against women are socially normalized and uses the concept of intersectionality to show that sexism, racism, and social inequalities act together in maintaining the exclusion of these women, especially Black women. It also addresses the impacts of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the female overload in family care, domestic tasks, and work. The research is conducted using the ethnographic method, observing the participants' experiences in the Adult Education environment and in the community where they live. The study concludes that the power and domination structures present in society reinforce historical processes of oppression that hinder these women's access to and retention in education, the labor market, and the execution of their life projects.
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GEISSY DOS REIS FERREIRA DE OLIVEIRA
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An anthropological understanding of the "Covid-19 sequelae": ethnographing
experiences of illness of women users of a USF in João Pessoa.
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Fecha: 28-abr-2026
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Hora: 08:00
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What are the "COVID-19 sequelae," if we choose to understand them anthropologically,
from the experiences of illness experienced by women, with attention to the impacts
generated? This is the central problem of this thesis. In the context of the persistence of
COVID-19, this doctoral research is therefore oriented towards understanding the
illness experiences of women with "COVID sequelae," from a health service of Primary
Health Care (PHC). Condition of illness, still without an objective diagnosis, which is
also narrated and signified by the interlocutors as the experience of a corporeality and
"other" health after COVID-19. This ethnography, inserted in the bojo of Health
Anthropology, was carried out in the neighborhood of Indústrias, city of João
Pessoa/PB, between 2023 and 2024, with women, residents of this territory, and users of
the Integrated Family Health Unit Verde Vida. In the offices, following home
consultations, visits with Community Health Agents (ACS), and interviews, a series of
symptoms appeared in the narratives, and at various times, expressions such as "I am no
longer the same", "I stopped doing what I used to do", "after COVID, a lot changed"
and "I lost my health," as well as "sequelae" as ways to narrate this disease as long-lived
by the interlocutors. Impacts related to health, but also to socioeconomic condition were
present in the narratives of the interlocutors. With this work, issues such as experiences
with illness, narratives, temporalities, visual repertoires of COVID-19 and conformation
of infirmity are reflected in the framework of COVID-19 sequelae, from an
intersectional perspective, since the ethnographic research from the aforementioned
health service. Illness that is also reported in other areas such as long-term COVID and
post-COVID conditions. Experiences with the sequelae, in terms of the impact and
persistence of COVID-19, which, when addressed both qualitatively and empirically,
allow us a contextual and embodied understanding of COVID-19 impacts, as well as of
the local contexts and expertise themselves, both crossed by social markers, with
emphasis in this work for the gender.
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ISADORA SIPP VALLE
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The sociomedical care and the coproduction of disability: an ethnography of a habilitation/rehabilitation clinic
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Asesor : PEDRO FRANCISCO GUEDES DO NASCIMENTO
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Fecha: 02-mar-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This research aims to understand the representations, practices, and materialities involved in the socio-medical care of children with severe disabilities in the physical therapy department of an NGO called Instituto Assistencial Professor Joaquim Amorim Neto (IPESQ). This institute, located in the city of Campina Grande (PB), was founded in 2010 with the aim of promoting scientific research in the area of maternal and child health, but after the Zika virus epidemic began in 2015, its social function was expanded. Since then, IPESQ has been responding to requests for social and health care for children with what has become known as neural disorders and their families in the state of Paraíba. The data was collected from field research conducted between January and June 2025, during which time I monitored the daily routine of habilitation/rehabilitation services in the physical therapy department of the aforementioned facility. In the first part of the dissertation, I outline this institute with a view to explaining its operational aspects and its three areas of action, namely a) social assistance, b) health care, and c) scientific research. Secondly, I propose a theoretical exploration of Disability Studies, appropriating the category of co-production and making an effort to demonstrate the conceptual path I gradually followed until arriving at a political/relational model of disability as a key element guiding the work. I also include some considerations regarding the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) as a global health instrument that is relevant to the maturation of the field of Disability Studies in Brazil. In a third moment, I focus on the ethnographic data itself, that is, I propose a dive into the daily interactions that give life to the institute's physical therapy sector, proposing analyses based on the political/relational model mentioned above. By presenting the everyday micro-practices that seek to promote the care of bodies in debilitated states, which is also a shared care, my broader horizon is to invest in an imaginative exercise that shifts our monolithic conceptions around disability.
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JAMERSON BEZERA LUCENA
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WARAO MOBILITIES: DOMESTIC ORGANIZATION, FORMATION OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TERRITORIAL DYNAMICS IN NORTHEASTERN BRAZIL
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Asesor : ALEXANDRA BARBOSA DA SILVA
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Fecha: 28-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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The aim of this thesis is to understand the strategies of action, communication networks,
and the activation of kinship networks developed by indigenous Warao groups from
Venezuela who experienced forced displacement, producing mobilities until they
arrived in Brazil. The central focus was to conduct extensive fieldwork across several
cities in the Northeast of Brazil, such as João Pessoa/PB, Campina Grande/PB,
Natal/RN, Mossoró/RN, Recife/PE, and some cities in the state of Bahia, including
Feira de Santana/BA, Santo Antônio de Jesus/BA, and Jacobina/BA. In addition,
fieldwork was carried out in the lower delta of the Orinoco River, in the municipality of
Antonio Díaz, Delta Amacuro State, Venezuela, the Waraos place of origin.
Dozens of Warao groups live in the city of João Pessoa, Paraíba, as well as in other
locations, seeking interaction within urban spaces and thus producing territorialities
through shelters and village-like localities where they live. In these contexts, they
engage in interethnic contact with a wide range of social actors, including legal
professionals, religious institutions, educational institutions, and indigenous agencies
such as FUNAI. These relationships have generated articulations, misunderstandings,
conflicts, and also new forms of interaction.
Within these flows between shelters and village-like localities, Warao groups move
dynamically from one city to another, mapping places and producing circuits in search
of carrying out their urban collections, with cooperation between men and women
unlike the forms of collection practiced in Venezuela. The Warao brought with them
their cultural repertoire, techniques, and skills, thereby strengthening their sense of
ethnic belonging through the production of handicrafts made from buriti (moriche) fiber and new materials (polyester threads and cords), such as chinchorros (hammocks),
basketry, and other technical objects for use and, especially, for commercialization.
They produce mobilities and territorialities across various Brazilian cities, weaving
networks of contact and kinship that are spread out and set up across multiple
institutional shelters and village-like localities within urban spaces. In this process,
kinship and friendship ties with some non-Indigenous groups are strengthened,
generating branches across several cities and extending beyond the limits of the
Northeast region into other regions of Brazil.
By activating this survival mechanism, the Warao interact with kin groups through
visitation processes, carry out healing practices with wisidatu (shamans), and establish
contact with other healers and bajanarotus (sorcerers), which may lead to accusations of
witchcraft and, consequently, intrafamilial conflicts. The post-pandemic period (from
2021 onward) has revealed the inefficiency of shelter policies implemented in Brazil,
which has intensified intrafamilial conflicts and conflicts with external agents, as well
as engendered a process of hyper-tutelage in which the Warao feel oppressed and
become victims of symbolic and physical violence, among other forms of violation.
Despite this, they seek to resist by living outside shelters and, over time, to strengthen
themselves through the creation of Indigenous Association.
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MARIA ALANE DOS SANTOS
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Along the Paths of the Villages: A Study of the Territorial Dynamics of the Indigenous Peoples of the Lower São Francisco
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Asesor : ESTEVAO MARTINS PALITOT
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Fecha: 28-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This work is the result of field research I conducted between 2023 and 2025 with the Fulkaxó community, located in Pacatuba-SE, and the Natu-Kaxagó community, situated in Porto Real do Colégio-AL, in the Lower São Francisco region. Both communities share the common characteristic of being groups of families undertaking a movement in search of a new territory in the state of Sergipe. The choice of these communities was not only due to geographical proximity, but also to the historical, cultural, and political ties they both maintain with the Kariri-Xocó community. The research aims to analyze the mobility processes undertaken by the Fulkaxó and Natu-Kaxagó families in their search for a new space and greater organizational autonomy. Therefore, I focused my attention on the trajectories of these families, who, based on shared experiences, formed new ethnic groups and initiated a process of territorial claim with the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), requesting the acquisition of land in the state of Sergipe. The central objective of this work was to understand how these indigenous families have been articulating and organizing themselves, while simultaneously constructing processes of identity recognition that result in the formation of new ethnic groups. Furthermore, I analyze the processes of circulation among the Fulkaxó, Natu-Kaxagó, and Kariri-Xocó communities, highlighting how these articulations occur amidst contexts of territorial mobility, internal conflicts, and external and internal pressures, thus creating new configurations and forms of belonging and strategies of resistance.
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DIEGO VARTULI CAVANELLAS
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DINÂMICA TERRITORIAL E PROCESSO DE DEMARCAÇÃO DE
TERRAS INDÍGENAS ENTRE OS KAIOWA DO MATO GROSSO DO SUL.
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Asesor : FABIO MURA
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Fecha: 27-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This research examines the territorial dynamics and the process of Indigenous land
demarcation among the Kaiowa of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, focusing on the native
category tekoha as its central analytical axis. Based on a situated ethnographic position
linked to participation in a FUNAI Working Group, the study articulates ethnographic
method, ethnohistorical analysis and cosmopolitical reflection to understand how the
Kaiowa actively rework their territorial categories within contemporary land conflicts.
The argument advanced is that tekoha is neither a fixed spatial unit nor a remnant of a
precolonial territorial organization, but rather a political, social and cosmological project in constant reconfiguration, mobilized through land recoveries, demarcation
processes and strategies of reexistence. The research demonstrates that Kaiowa
territoriality emerges from the tension between two asymmetric processes: state
territorialization, which seeks to fix identities and delimit spaces through legal and
technical devices, and Indigenous dominialization, grounded in mobility, reciprocity
and the historical memory of extended families teyi. Drawing on participant
observation, interviews, genealogical analysis and participatory mapping, the study
shows that contemporary forms of occupation, such as roadside camps and circulation
between villages, farms and cities, must be understood as legitimate strategies of
territorial reconstruction rather than indicators of cultural disintegration. The conclusion
is that the Kaiowa struggle for land is inseparable from their cosmology and social
organization, constituting tekoha as the core of a dispute that is simultaneously political,
historical and ontological.
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BEATRIZ SOARES GONÇALVES
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"City of Children": an urban ethnography in Jundiaí/SP
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Asesor : FLAVIA FERREIRA PIRES
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Fecha: 27-feb-2026
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Hora: 13:00
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This work constitutes an urban ethnography on childhood experiences in Jundiaí-SP, more
specifically on the actions and policies carried out by the municipal administration that operated from 2017 to 2024, maintaining a commitment to this population segment through its adherence to the Children's City Project (La Città dei Bambini). Founded by the Italian educator Francesco Tonucci in 1991 in the city of Fano (Italy), the Project is currently present in hundreds of cities around the world; Jundiaí-SP was the first Brazilian municipality to join it. The investigation employed various research techniques, notably exploratory walks, informal conversations, photographic records and field diaries, attentive listening, and multiple observations. Following the actions and proposals carried out by the city hall, various everyday social situations were portrayed, seeking to demonstrate how the target audience (children and their families) receive them not as passive agents, but rather as agents modifying the urban context even when made invisible. The participation and listening of children is a pillar of the Project under analysis; therefore, the institutionalization of this practice in Jundiaí-SP is debated, contrasting different perspectives and urban experiences of children. The Children's Cities network and the Jundiaí administration are discussed, seeking to understand the agreements that articulate the unfolding of the Project in public policies. Thus, the thesis points to a city project with innovative potential, but with several limitations, especially in the Brazilian experience where it acquired a partisan and governmental political character, not guaranteeing that its benefits would widely reach children and the continuity of actions.
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WEVERSON BEZERRA SILVA
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"If cold numbers don't touch us, I hope names can play": Death management and modes of memory production in the covid-19 pandemic through the mourners.
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Fecha: 27-feb-2026
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Hora: 13:00
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hat allow us to understand the society in which we live and its singularities, according
to the historical context in which the individual is inserted and their cultural
relationships, as these events transcend the individual scope and play a fundamental role
in the construction of collective identity, beliefs, values, rituals and ways of dealing
with grief, thus reflecting the complexity of death scenarios. In the midst of a pandemic,
in which individual/collective illness and death merge into a collective and traumatic
experience, challenges multiply, drawing attention not only to health aspects, but also to
social, symbolic, political dimensions and ethics of this phenomenon. This thesis work
falls within the field of Anthropology of Death, seeking to understand the ritualistic
processes of terminality and death of victims of Covid-19 in the pandemic, through the
experiences of bereaved women who lost their loved ones in the years 2020, 2021 in
hospital environment, at the time of restrictions on rites of passage. The mass losses and
biosafety standards in a short space of time during the pandemic bring a reflection on
how the State is acting in implementing protocols at the time of farewell rituals, as well
as on the State's practices in relation to contaminated bodies by Covid-19. Bearing this
in mind, the relevance of this work is justified in contributing to the understanding of
the transformations that have been taking place in the ritual field surrounding death in
times of Covid-19: how the treatment of contaminated dead bodies is happening by the
coronavirus (post-mortem) and what are the implications of these changes in the
ritualistic process and its resignifications with the dead body. This anthropological
analysis highlights how funeral practices were affected and adapted during the
pandemic, considering health restrictions, affected cultural traditions and the
management of emotions. Furthermore, by examining the public policies that were
implemented to deal with the impacts of the pandemic in the funeral and mourning
sphere, it becomes possible to identify how government authorities conditioned the way
in which mourners dealt with the passing, as well as how these interventions Regulatory
regulations may have shaped the death experience and the grieving process in the postmortem. In this way, the results can reach an understanding of practices aimed at bodies
killed in the pandemic, as well as public policies that can ensure actions for the bereaved, analyzing the responses that are being created in this time of challenge and
health crisis.
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CAIO TACITO RODRIGUES PEREIRA
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Association and Neighbourhood: An Ethnography of the Tabajara' Associativist Movement in Barra de Gramame
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Asesor : ALEXANDRA BARBOSA DA SILVA
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Fecha: 27-feb-2026
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Hora: 10:30
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This dissertation analyzes the associativist movement of the Tabajara people in Barra do
Gramame (Southern Coast of Paraíba, Brazil), using an ethnographic approach. It starts from the hypothesis that associativism is not merely a response to conflicts or a state
imposition, but an organic development of the social and economic organization of
domestic groups. The research investigates how indigenous associations emerge as
strategic mediators between the logic of local social organization, based on the
principles of the domestic economy and neighborhood networks, and the structures of
the State and the market. The long-term ethnography (2011-2014; 2022-2025) revealed
that the "Associação dos Tabajara da Barra do Gramame" acts as a legal corporation
that translates local authorityrooted in kinship and the prestige of heads of domestic
groupsinto a form recognized by the State. This allows for the legitimation of
customary practices (such as informal land-work partnerships), the acquisition and
redistribution of resources, and the negotiation of ethnic identities (indigenous,
quilombola, settler) in a context of historical deterritorialization and contemporary
territorial pressure from tourism, real estate speculation, agribusiness, and mining. It
concludes that associativism constitutes a creative and adaptive political strategy,
fundamental for energizing social organization and the flow of knowledge locally,
ensuring the territorial assertion of the Tabajara in the face of a legal system often
dissonant with their traditional ways of occupying and managing the territory.
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DENISE MAYUME PEREIRA KAMADA
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Patrimonialização de Areia na Paraíba: atores e lutas simbólicas
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Asesor : PATRICIA ALVES RAMIRO
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Fecha: 27-feb-2026
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Hora: 08:00
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This thesis analyzes the processes of symbolic valorization of the municipality of Areia,
located in the Paraíba hinterland, anchored in initiatives for the selection of cultural
assets and heritage. These mechanisms are understood as the result of a social field, a
product of symbolic disputes, in which agents, institutions, and distinct value regimes
are articulated. Using an ethnographic methodological approach, articulated with
documentary and historical analysis, the work investigates the constitution of the
historical center of Areia as a listed heritage site, the valorization of architectural assets,
museums, cultural festivals, and spaces of memory, highlighting the protagonism of agrarian, intellectual, political, and religious elites in the construction of legitimizing
narratives about the past. It argues that these processes constructed a public image of the
municipality strongly associated with a monumentalized rural past, in which the
selected and consecrated cultural assets operate as memory references for local elites,
privileging socially prestigious figures and spaces historically linked to these social
groups. At the same time, it is demonstrated that these procedures do not constitute a
consensus, generating criticism and opposing perceptions from groups that did not
conduct the processes, while also producing silences and hierarchies of other historical
experiences, especially regarding slavery, the memory of rural work, and other
subjugated groups.
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RAFAELA MAYARA DE OLIVEIRA SCHUH
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You are in Tabajara Territory
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Asesor : KELLY EMANUELLY DE OLIVEIRA
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Fecha: 26-feb-2026
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Hora: 10:00
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This research addresses conflicts related to the territorial regularization of
an Indigenous area, faced in the Nova Conquista Taquara Village, the third
self-demarcated village of the Tabajara people in Paraíba, located in the municipality of
Conde. The dissertation was constructed based on participant observation, interviews,
and access to legal proceedings, focusing on the self-demarcation process of the area
known as Bambuzal and Praia do Amor, traditional Tabajara territory, currently the
target of real estate speculation, predatory tourism, and illegal exploitation of natural
resources. The community works to build a collective and self-sustainable life, with
initiatives such as clearing crops, housing construction, a communal kitchen, a seedling
nursery, a medicinal garden, and the revitalization of the Lamarão River. It also
organizes politically through women's groups, assemblies, activities in the Indigenous
Movement, and the use of audiovisual media as a strategy for struggle and resistance
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LUCIANA CALADO RODRIGUES
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The university is not a place for mothers: intersectional considerations on motherhood as a social marker of difference in mothers' access and permanence in academia.
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Fecha: 26-feb-2026
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Hora: 08:00
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This thesis is a place of life in motion, like flowing waters, from the cry of loneliness to subversion, mobilizing anger and joy that flow downstream. Like all places of life, it is potential for discovery and, as movement, a space-time to confront questions, reflect, and allow oneself to immerse oneself in uncertainties, bathing alongside the issues that emerge. Through the theoretical-methodological paths of decolonial intersectional theories and Black feminism, I undertook the production of a situated and embodied ethnography, from approaching the field of maternal studies even as a mother myself, and the situations that awakened in me the possibility of theorizing an ethnographic realism and the politics of everyday life from a point of view. The displacement occurred due to the estrangement from the conceptions I had of the distinct roles of student, worker, and mother, and how my experience with other mothers put me on a collision course with myself as relationally traversed by all these roles and performances, which positioned me as a researcher. Opening pathways for life to flow, I immerse myself in reflections on the category of Mother and motherhood, always intersected, as a social marker of difference, using a university in Northeast Brazil as my locus. Also engaged in a robust documentary analysis, I explore questions about access and retention of mothers, considering maternal work, which I believe should not be limited to the category of reproductive labor, and for this I mobilize the category of the immaterial labor of Mothers. Understanding the university as an institution and space to which mothers do not feel they belong, I analyze the statements of student mothers in the spaces in which I participated, and other data collected with an electronic form, between 2022 and 2024. The research points to important issues for reflections in the field of maternal studies, namely: the demands of social groups of mothers are different from those of other minority social segments, and the socio-historical centrality of race and ethnicity to consider the marker of motherhood in intersectionality in Brazilian epistemological productions, since the issues about work posed by classical feminism, as a Eurocentric epistemic toolproduct, do not expressly dialogue with our Amerindian and amefrican realities and needs.
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DAVID SOUSA GARCES
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Gênero, sexualidade e ciberespaço: a construção da masculinidade de policiais militares gays
pertencentes a PMCE a partir da interação em um aplicativo de mensagens
instantâneas
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Fecha: 25-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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Esta tese analisa como policiais militares gays constroem, negociam e performam suas
masculinidades em um contexto institucional marcado por hierarquias rígidas,
disciplinamento cotidiano e normas hegemônicas de gênero e sexualidade. A partir de
uma etnografia realizada em um grupo de WhatsApp composto por esses policiais,
articulada ao acompanhamento de suas experiências na corporação, investigo como
sociabilidades digitais se constituem como territórios simbólicos de acolhimento,
reconhecimento e elaboração coletiva de tensões vividas no ambiente militar. O estudo
revela que o espaço virtual opera como uma zona de proteção e pertencimento, onde
circulam afetos, humor, vulnerabilidades, erotismos e estratégias de resistência que
raramente encontram lugar na interação presencial. A análise das performatividades no
ciberespaço mostra que essas masculinidades são continuamente tensionadas e
reinventadas, evidenciando disputas entre expectativas institucionais de virilidade e as
formas dissidentes de existir desses sujeitos. Os resultados demonstram que tais
masculinidades não são fixas, mas práticas relacionais produzidas na articulação entre
trajetórias individuais, valores da corporação, moralidades políticas e dinâmicas de
controle e assédio. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa reafirma a validade da etnografia
digital e da implicação como ferramenta analítica, permitindo acessar nuances que
permanecem ocultas nas abordagens tradicionais sobre instituições militares. Concluo
que, mesmo em ambientes caracterizados pelo conservadorismo e pela vigilância moral,
emergem fissuras que possibilitam a criação de redes de apoio, modos próprios de
sociabilidade e formas alternativas de habitar a masculinidade. A tese contribui para os
estudos antropológicos sobre gênero, sexualidade e instituições disciplinadoras, ao
evidenciar que masculinidades dissidentes produzem brechas de existência e reinvenção
dentro da Polícia Militar.
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AMANDA GIORIATTI LUNKES
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Cosmology, disease processes and healing practices: anthropological considerations on health and disease among the Kaiowa
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Asesor : FABIO MURA
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Fecha: 24-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This dissertation presents a systematization of anthropological literature
on cosmology, processes of illness, and healing practices among the Kaiowa of Mato
Grosso do Sul, with an emphasis on indigenous therapeutic itineraries. The text begins
with an overview of healthcare in Brazil and its implications for indigenous health, from
the First Republic to the implementation of the Indigenous Healthcare Subsystem
(SasiSUS), contextualizing the health policies that have historically affected Kaiowa
territories. The research explores the links between Kaiowa cosmology, the notion of
personhood, and the multiple forms of therapeutic agency mobilized by this people.
Through a bibliographic survey, gaps in anthropological production on the subject are
identified and avenues for future research that contemplate the complexity of
contemporary Kaiowa therapeutic itineraries are pointed out. The work analyzes the
tensions and negotiations established between traditional healing practices and
differentiated public health policies. The dissertation contributes to the understanding of
the dynamics of health-illness-healing in contexts of medical pluralism, highlighting
how territoriality, cosmopolitics, and traditional knowledge are intertwined in the
construction of health care among the Kaiowa.
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LAURA MARQUES LOPES
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Maternal death due to Covid-19 and survivors of everyday life:
Care narratives in families affected by orphanhood in Paraíba
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Asesor : FLAVIA FERREIRA PIRES
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Fecha: 24-feb-2026
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Hora: 08:00
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This ethnographic research is conducted among families affected by maternal death due to
Covid-19, within the scope of the Paraíba public policy of monthly income transfer to children
and adolescents orphaned by Covid-19, the Paraíba que Acolhe Program. It focuses on the care
relationships between: a) two sisters who are legally responsible for their younger siblings; and
b) a maternal aunt who is legally responsible for her nephews after the transfer of care from
her older niece. In the municipalities of Patos, Campina Grande, and João Pessoa, I followed
three families who, after the maternal death due to Covid-19, reconfigured their daily care
routines. Between 2024 and 2025, I sat in kitchens, walked through backyards, listened to
interrupted conversations, and witnessed silences that also speak. Care here falls on the hands
of women who readjust their own rhythms of life to this responsibility. Although included in
the institutional category of orphans used by the social assistance policy of the state of
Paraíba, children and adolescents reject the term, finding belonging in those who assume
parenthood. In interviews marked by outbursts and memories, caregivers reveal a care that is
(re)constructed in the absence and attempt at sufficiency. In their daily lives, they are
supported by grandmothers, mothers-in-law, and neighborsintergenerational female
networks that support the family group. Their experiences indicate emotional and work
overload, but also the collective reconfiguration of sustaining life in the midst of grief. In the
(re)construction of life through daily routines, the time for dreaming emerges: the hope for a
future in which they may, perhaps, achieve the desires and life projects that still sparkle within
them.
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NATHÁLIA JORGE NOVAIS
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Voices of Contendas: Narratives, Experiences, and Perceptions of Dona Idália Regarding the Quilombo of São Pedro dos Miguéis
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Asesor : FABIO MURA
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Fecha: 23-feb-2026
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Hora: 14:00
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This dissertation proposes an ethnographic analysis of the ethnic and territorial
formation process of the Quilombo São Pedro dos Miguéis, located in the
municipality of Catolé do Rocha, in the hinterland of Paraíba, based on the life
narrative of Dona Idália, a 72-year-old woman born in the territory and a descendant
of the pioneering family originating from the Quilombo de Contendas, in São
Bento/PB. The research uses oral memory as a fundamental methodology to
understand the historical, social, and symbolic dynamics that structure the collective
life of the community (Halbwachs 1990; Portelli 1997). The history of São Pedro dos
Miguéis unfolds in layers: from the displacements that marked the paths of the
quilombola families to the daily processes of constructing the territory, territoriality,
and territorial dynamics through domestic ecology, dominion, and the process of
territorialization (Barth 1995; Pacheco de Oliveira 1998; Mura & Barbosa 2011; Mura
2019). In this sense, the concept of quilombo is understood beyond a historical
category restricted to the colonial period, being understood as a form of social,
political, and territorial organization (ABA 1994; ODwyer 2002; Arruti 1997, 2005;
Almeida 2004, 2011). The term "quilombo remnant," as defined by the Brazilian
Anthropological Association (1994), has been used by the groups themselves to
designate a legacy, a cultural and material heritage that gives them a present
reference in the feeling of being and belonging to a specific place and group. This
definition highlights the processual character of quilombo identity, anchored in
memory, kinship relations, and the continuous relationship with the territory. The
trajectory of Dona Idália, grounded in agriculture and the tradition of knowledge,
demonstrates the links between territory and quilombo identity, built from the flows of
knowledge that connect traditional practices and local knowledge, through learning
processes, which constitute formative practices rooted in daily experience and the
relationship with the territory (Barth 2000). These are territories in which the past is
not limited to memory, but is updated in daily practices, knowledge, and forms of
social organization. In these contexts, attention education operates as a formative
principle that organizes ways of inhabiting the world, refining perceptions, gestures,
and relationships with the territory, and guiding the construction of spaces of tradition
and social continuity (Ingold 2010). The community also expresses itself in daily
practices of caring for the land, in the transmission of knowledge, and in the
strengthening of community ties. By focusing on the narrative of an elderly
quilombola woman, this research contributes to the valorization of Black
epistemologies, highlighting orality as a legitimate form of anthropological knowledge
production. The identity construction of the São Pedro dos Miguéis Quilombo is,
therefore, understood as a constantly evolving process, forged at the intersection of
history, spirituality, struggle, memory, and territory.
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DURVALINA RODRIGUES LIMA DE PAULA E SILVA
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BLACK WOMEN AND AXÉ: LIFE-PRODUCING PRACTICES IN THE FACE OF NECROPOLITICS IN THE COLIBRIS COMMUNITY, SANTA RITA-PB (BRAZIL)
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Asesor : MONICA LOURDES FRANCH GUTIERREZ
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Fecha: 23-feb-2026
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Hora: 09:00
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This thesis is born from a "calling" that overflows academic boundaries to settle upon the sacred and political ground of an Afro-Amerindian Terreiro in the Colibris Community (Santa Rita/PB). It is the fruit of an immersion into shared experiences with Black women who, by denying death in their daily lives, subvert historical silencings and confront Eurocentric thought. The work focuses on the resistance of 20 women who, in the face of state neglect and the machinations of racism, confront necropolitics and affirm life through Axé (vital force) and ancestral technologies of care and resistance. The central objective is to analyze how the gears of racismintersected by race, gender, and classand necropolitics impact these women's existence, while identifying strategies for the maintenance of life. Anchored in the Anthropology of Health, this work problematizes the processes of health, disease, and care as social constructs shaped by power relations and subjectivities. This perspective transcends a purely biological lens to understand health as a lived and politically situated experience. To this end, I affirm that this work was developed under the perspective of an engaged and implicated anthropology, assuming non-neutrality and listening as political acts; it is an analysis committed to social reality and humanized by the understanding that ethnography is also an encounter based on respect, trust, and affection By political and epistemological choice, the thesis prioritizes Black intellectuals. The theoretical dialogue moves through Sueli Carneiros ontology of negation, the intersectionality of Kimberlé Crenshaw and Lélia Gonzalez, and the philosophy of bell hooks and Nêgo Bispo regarding the Terreiro as a space for collective healing. The entire text is woven under the tones of Conceição Evaristos Escrevivência, giving body to collective memories and victories. The relevance of this work lies in its unprecedented and urgent character, revealing the political and spiritual organization of care in historically discriminated territories. The ethnography highlights the figure of the Yalorixá, who acts in practice as the "guardian of health" in a sacred territory, proving that the act of producing health amidst adversity is a direct confrontation with the sovereignty that dictates who must die and who may live. As results, state necropolitics is identified as present through the contrast between "asphalt on paper" and "mud on the ground"; from the "lottery" of medical appointments in health services to police approaches; and from the lack of transportation to cartographic and administrative invisibility. At the epicenter of this lack of assistance, the "Sementes-Mulheres" (Seed-Women) subvert the system: where the State plans silence and death, the Terreiro produces voice, healing, and re-existence through ancestral knowledge, the use of leaves, and Axé. The leadership of Mãe-Arruda functions as a counter-necropolitics, transforming a territory of scarcity into a space of life and resistance, making the Terreiro a living and insurgent response, and political organization a perspective for a better future. This thesis does not end at the final period of the last sentence, but in the echo of the voices of the Seed-Women who, between the scent of basil and the mud of nameless streets, redefined my understanding of humanity and science.
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RAFAELLA SUALDINI
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Living archives and memory: an ethnographic approach to super-8 in paraíba in the 1980s
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Asesor : LARA SANTOS DE AMORIM
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Fecha: 30-ene-2026
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Hora: 14:30
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This dissertation is primarily based on the project Cinema Paraibano: Memória e Preservação (CP:MP), coordinated by Lara Amorim and Fernando Trevas, professors at the Federal University of Paraíba. The research stems from the investigation of a collection of Super-8 films telecined between 2012 and 2013 by photographer Roberto Buzzini, with a focus on productions from the so-called "third cycle of Paraíba cinema" (19791986). By exploring the intersection of cinema, memory, and visual anthropology, the study examines the significance of these films and unedited footage for the history of audiovisual production in Paraíba. One of the major influences of the period was Cinéma Direct (Direct Cinema), particularly through the Ateliers Varan, a French school founded by filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, which aimed to train filmmakers. This model reached Paraíba in 1979 during the VIII Jornada de Cinema da Bahia (Bahia Film Festival) and led to the creation, in 1980, of the Núcleo de Documentação Cinematográfica (NUDOC/UFPB), a space dedicated to the study of Direct Cinema and audiovisual production, with training programs conducted both at UFPB and in France. The research also considers the contribution of Cinema Indireto (Indirect Cinema), proposed by Jomard Muniz de Britto, as a subversive approach in the development of cinematic practices at the time. Finally, it analyzes selected works and discusses preservation efforts for the NUDOC collection, including the CP:MP project itself and the Digitalização Viajante (Cine Limite) project, which expanded digitization efforts and promoted the circulation of some of these films in national and international showcases.
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