Campus Directory

Pronouns she/her

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/ College/ Unit Latin American & Latino Studies

Title Ph.D. Candidate

Affiliation Graduate

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Anthropology Department
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

Web Site

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours Tuesdays, 9-11 AM

Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

marina is a 5th-year Ph. D. candidate in Latin American & Latine Studies, with a designated emphasis in Anthropology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on race and ethnicity education in Brazil's undergraduate Psychology programs. marina is a member of the Black Geographies Lab (UCSC), coordinated by Dr. Camilla Hawthorne, as well as the Manguezal: Filosofias e Poéticas Afrodiaspóricas Research Laboratory (Brazil). She also teaches at the Cursinho Pré-Vestibular Popular Quilombo Flores, a popular education preparatory course for young adults studying for Brazil's National High School Exam (ENEM). Her research interests include Black geographies, land-based struggles in the Américas, urban spatialities, território, and marronage. In her current project, she collaborates with maroon (quilombola) women mobilizing their communities (quilombos) toward territorial rights in Porto Alegre, Brazil's southernmost metropolis. Her research sensorially traces how quilombola women's everyday practices of resistance make space for alternative black futures within and against the bounds of racist spatial exclusion in the Brazilian urban south.

• 2025 M.A. in Latin American & Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz
• 2022 B.A. in Psychology, Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre

Research Interests

Black geographies, land-based struggles in the Américas, urban spatialities, território, and marronage.

Teaching Interests

Teaching Assistant Experience at UCSC

• Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender
• The Right to Health: An Introduction to Latin American Social Medicine
• Youth and Citizenship
• Unfree Migrations
• Race and Mobility
• Social Science Analytics (formerly Research in Latin American & Latino Studies)
• Truth, Justice, and Statistics
• Introduction to Chicanx and Latinx Studies
• Introduction to Latin American and Latino Studies
• Black Feminisms: An Introduction

Social and Popular Education Experience in Brazil

• Languages (Brazilian Portuguese, English, Brazilian Literature, and Writing/Composition)

Awards, Honors and Grants

• 2026 Summer Publishing Institute Fellowship, LALS UC-Hispanic Serving Institutions’ Doctoral Diversity Incentive
• 2026 Graduate Student Award, UCSC Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Américas
• 2025 American Association of University Women (AAUW) International Doctoral Fellowship 
• 2025 Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
• 2024 LALS Qualifying Exams Fellowship, UCSC
• 2024 James R. Scobie Award, Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) 
• 2023 Graduate Student Award, UCSC Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Américas 
• 2023 UCSC Dean's Travel Grant
• 2023 Routes of Enslavement in the Américas Graduate Research Grant, UC-MRPI
• 2023 Brazilian Initiation Fellowship, Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA)
• 2022 UCSC Regents Fellowship

Selected Presentations

Panel Presentations

• “Aterrando metáforas: O ‘quilombo’ como geografia negra.” 18th Biennial Brazilian Studies Association Congress, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil, 2026.
• “Double Haunting: Reading Fiction from the Civil Rights Movement and Reliving It.” Presented on behalf of Dr. Carolyn M. Shaw at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 2025.
• “Between Black Roots and Asphalt: Quilombola Political Struggles in Porto Alegre and West Pará.” 17th Biennial Brazilian Studies Association Congress, San Diego State University, CA, 2024.

Guest Lectures

• "Quilombos in the Brazilian Urban South." Quilombos Working Group, Social Services Municipal Department, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2026. 
• “A Maroon Sense of Place: Tracing Freedom with Quilombola Women in the Brazilian Urban South.” Annual Educational Fund Meeting, AAUW Alameda Branch, Alameda, CA, 2026 (Virtual).
• “Maroons, Marronage, and Black Liberation in Brazil and the Américas.” Black Studies Online Seminar Series, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 2025 (Virtual).
• "Maroons, Marronage, and Black Liberation." Undergraduate Seminar in Blackness in Motion, Department of Gender Studies, Queen’s University, Toronto, Canada, 2025 (Virtual).
• "Quilombos in Brazil." North-Northeast Reference Centers for Social Services, Social Services Municipal Department, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2024.
• "Silence does not erase the past: Race and ethnicity in Brazilian psychology education." Nucleus of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies (NEABI), UFCSPA, Brazil, 2023.

Roundtable Presentations

• "Gender and sexuality in the Brazilian context: dialogues with social activists from the feminist and LGBT+ movements," with Camila B. Liebgott, Samantha Medeiros, and Daiana Santos. Graduate Seminar in Youth and Political Action, Education Graduate Program, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2022 (Virtual).
• "Priority Vaccination of Indigenous and Quilombola Communities," with Jamaika Machado and Sandra Pankararu. National Directory of Medical Students, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2021 (Virtual).

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed journal article

A universidade como espaço de luta: as experiências políticas de jovens militantes de Porto Alegre (RS), with Camila B. Liebgott & Samantha M. Ferreira. 2022. Cadernos de Pós-graduação (Uninove) 21(2): 59-73.

Book chapter

Acolhimento emocional na delegacia especializada no atendimento à mulher (DEAM): relato de experiência, with Anna Júlia Carrión & Clarissa De Antoni. 2021. In Contribuições da psicologia para enfrentamento à violência contra mulheres: aportes teóricos e práticos, edited by L. Habigzang, & J. Zamora. Dialética.

Public scholarship

Between Black Roots and Asphalt: Quilombola Land Struggles in Brazil. 2025. Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas: Open Forum, February 24. 

Work in progress

Grounding metaphors: "Quilombo" as a black geography.