Mariana Cavalcanti

Mariana Cavalcanti is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP/UERJ). She received her Ph.D. in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007 and was an Associate Professor at the School of Social Sciences and History of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (CPDOC/FGV) from 2008 to 2015. In 2020-21, she was the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

Dr. Cavalcanti has published extensively on housing, urbanism, infrastructure, and public policy. She co-edited Occupy All Streets: Olympic Urbanism and Contested Futures in Rio de Janeiro and O Mundo Popular: trabalho e condições de vida. She co-directed the documentary Favela Fabril (2012, 49') and co-developed the plot and screenplay of the documentary A Conquista do Oeste (2023, 30'). She was co-founder and board member (2013-17) of Casa Fluminense, a civil society association that aims to deepen democracy and reduce inequalities in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. She is co-coordinator of the research collectives Grupo CASA: estudos sociais sobre moradia e cidade and ResiduaLab: laboratório de estudos sociais dos resíduos. Her current research focuses on urban waters and asks how climate change is transforming how we read, write, tell, and teach urban histories.