Brazil Week 2025 Writing Retreat
Disclaimer: For in-person events we operate a policy of overbooking, given drop-out rates. Please ensure you arrive in good time to avoid disappointment on the day.
Join the King's Brazil Institute for a writing retreat featuring presentations by academics on their work as part of Brazil Week 2025.
Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos will be organising the event and setting up the discussions throughout the day. Dr Matthias Rohrig Assunção and Dr Malu Gatto will be joining for discussions about their books, and Dr Katerina Hatzikidi will be joining as a discussant.
Students are invited to join for a full day of activities and talks to support academic writing.
About the speakers
12:00-13:00
"Peasant Rebellion in a Slave Society: The Balaiada in Maranhão, Brazil, 1800–1850"
Dr Matthias Rohrig Assunção, Sussex
Rohrig Assunção is interested in the history of plantation societies, in particular in Maranhão and Northern Brazil, and the political mobilisation of enslaved and free lower classes during the 19th century. Following his work on the history of the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira, he is trying to understand the development of combat games in the wider Black Atlantic, and in particular in Southern Angola. He also works more generally on the formation and development of popular culture in Brazil, and how it is staged and turned into "heritage". He is currently carrying out a research project about the history of capoeira in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the 20th century. Find out more about the project
16:00-17:00
"Resistance to Gender Quotas in Latin America"
Dr Malu Gatto, UCL
Malu A. C. Gatto is Associate Professor in Latin American Politics at the Institute of the Americas at University College London (UCL). Her work explores questions about political behaviour, representation, policymaking, and gender and politics with a regional focus on Latin America, especially Brazil. Her research has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Party Politics, and Politics & Gender, among others. She is the author of Resistance to Gender Quotas in Latin America (Oxford University Press) and Candidates: The First Steps of Women in Politics in Brazil (with Débora Thomé, published in Portuguese by FGV Editora). Malu completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.
About the discussant
Dr Katerina Hatzikidi
Katerina Hatzikidi is a political anthropologist and senior postdoctoral researcher at the ERC PACT: Populism and Conspiracy Theory project at the University of Tübingen. Her work explores political and social transformations with a special country focus on Brazil. Katerina holds an MSc and a DPhil in social anthropology from the University of Oxford. She is currently the PI of an international project on anticommunism in Brazil, funded by the University of Tübingen’s Excellence Strategy. In 2023, she was Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IFCS/UFRJ). Among other publications, Katerina has recently co-edited (with Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos) the volume The faces of authoritarianism and strategies of dissent in contemporary Brazil (UCL Press, 2025). Her monograph Conservatism and Conspiracism in Brazil. A Time of Awakening is forthcoming with Routledge.
About the organiser
Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos
Andreza is Director of the King's Brazil Institute. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, and holds a master’s degree in social sciences jointly awarded by the University of Freiburg, JNU in Delhi, and the University of KwaZulu Natal, in Durban. Andreza completed her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Brasilia. Having studied in Brazil, Germany, South Africa, India and the UK, Andreza writes about Brazilian politics and city governance comparatively. Before joining King's, she was a lecturer at the University of Oxford and at Oxford she directed the Brazilian Studies Programme (2018-2023). Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford’s School of Anthropology, where she worked at the Urban Transformations portfolio (ESRC). She has previously worked at Brazil’s Ministry of Social Development, the United Nations Office on Drugs.
About King's Brazil Week
Hosted by the King's Brazil Institute, King’s Brazil Week is an annual celebration of all things Brazilian.
During Brazil Week 2025, we discuss the emergence of new institutional frameworks and leadership models. When traditional powers lean toward authoritarianism, can cities and the Global South take the lead in securing effective global governance?
Find out more about Brazil Week
At this event
Director, King's Brazil Institute
Search for another event