Biography

Ana Rita Alves is an interdisciplinary scholar with a degree in Anthropology (2008), a master on Migrations, Inter-ethnicities (2013), and Transnationalism and a PhD on Human Rights in Contemporary Societies from the University of Coimbra (2023). Her engagement with different disciplines, such as anthropology, critical race theory or urban studies has been key to analyze entrenched processes of anti-black and anti-Roma political violence in Portugal, namely in the fields of epistemology, housing and justice, which resulted in numerous publications, namely the book "When Nobody Could Stay: Racism, Housing and Territory" (Tigre de Papel, 2021). Ana Rita was a 2020-2021 Black Studies Dissertation Scholar at the University of California Santa Barbara (USA) where she coordinated and taught the discipline "Race, Housing and Inheritance", and a consultant for the European Council in the scope of the project "Inclusive Schools: Making a Difference for Roma Children" (2022). She has been involved in several research projects, including "DAM - Digital African Memory in Portugal" (SEIM, 2023-2025), "COMBAT - Combating racism in Portugal: an analysis of public policies and anti-discrimination law" (FCT, 2016-2020), "AFRO-PORT - Afro-descendance in Portugal: Sociability, Representations and Sociopolitical and Cultural Dynamics. A Study in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area" (FCT, 2019-2021) and "(DE)OTHERING - Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and 'internal Others' in Portuguese and European mediascapes" (FCT, 2020-2021). Her work has highly benefited from a long-lasting close dialogue with black and Roma dwellers and collectives, generating unique epistemological insight and understanding of the daily consequences of anti-black and anti-Roma governmentalities in Portugal. This resulted in numerous jointly initiatives, including her involvement in grassroots processes of place-remaking and place-remembering, namely through the co-production of communitarian events and social cartographies, the co-curatorship of exhibitions and public programs and the co-authorship of articles or storytelling regarding self-produced and rehousing neighborhoods in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, consolidating a dialogue with the political, scientific and artistic fields. She is a founding member of CHÃO-Atelier of Urban Anthropology (2015), an academic outreach group committed in strengthening the relationship between academia and civil society. As a public intellectual, she has been participating in the national antiracist debate. Currently she is a researcher at the project "AGRRIN - Generative Bodies: from aggression to insurgence. Contributes for a decolonial pedagogy" (FCT, 2023-2026) in the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Education and Development (CeiED - Lusófona University) and a Collaborator Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES -University of Coimbra).