Originally from Teresina, Brazil, I hold a BA in International Relations from the University of Brasilia (UnB) and an MSc in International Relations Theory (distinction) from LSE. Throughout my PhD at LSE, I have been Editor and Associate Editor at Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 50) and have taught on International Security (IR205) and International Relations Theory. Currently, I also work as a coordinator at Doing International Political Sociology PhD Series. I have research and teaching expertise in Critical Security Studies, Border and Migration Studies, International Relations Theory, Human Geography, Black and Critical Race Studies, and Post/decolonial theories.
Research topic
Bordering Humanness: Race, Modernity, and Border Security in Europe
My doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Bordering Humanness: Race, Modernity, and Border Security in Europe’, is a study of the ways in which modern and colonial rationales and imaginaries concerning race and ‘humanness’ inform security techniques of violence, policing, and surveillance at borderzones. Looking at the current ‘migration crisis’ in Europe, my monograph unearths how Europe’s violent and securitising responses to the coming of Global South migrants mimic colonial techniques and rationales of repression and policing deployed at colonies and settler colonies. Triangulating history, theory, and empirics, it not only connects European borders to Europe’s colonial and imperial past but also assesses empirically the production and policing of racial hierarchies at Europe’s borderzones.My overall argument is that Europe’s border apparatus of security deploys techniques of governance and violence at borderzones that operate by continually barring racialised migrants from being legible as ‘modern humans’. This denial and policing of ‘humanness’ at the border, I contend, is not accidental, but necessary for the continuity of a colonial and racial capitalist global order marked by deep material inequality and racialised dynamics of mobility.
Employing both discourse analysis and posthuman methodologies, the thesis originally identifies and investigates three rationales of dehumanisation/racialisation at Europe’s borders: dispossession, objectification, and animalisation, and connects them to broader historical and contemporary dynamics within Europe’s colonial project. In doing so, my thesis contests theoretical frameworks within Security Studies that decontextualise the state apparatus of security at the border—and sovereignty writ large—from their colonial and imperial histories and advances an original approach to race/racialisation that allows us to better understand the intimacies between current dynamics of securitisation and policing globally and race.
Teaching experience
- IREL – 185329 Contemporary International Relations Theories (University of Brasilia/UnB)
- IR205 - International Security (LSE)
Academic supervisors
Katharine Millar
Mark Hoffman
Research Cluster affiliation
Theory/Area/History Research Cluster