This keynote forms part of the 7th International Conference of REBRAC (European Network of Brazilianists Working in Cultural Analysis), which will take place at King’s College London on 15–17 January 2026. We are grateful to the Instituto Guimarães Rosa/British Council for sponsoring our keynote speaker as part of the 2025/26 UK/Brazil Season of Culture.

In her presentation, Professor Lilia Moritz Schwarcz will explore her award-winning book Images of Whiteness: the Presence of Absence (Companhia das Letras, 2025), which analyses the social and cultural phenomenon of whiteness through its symbolic and iconographic expressions. Her work brings together visual culture, anthropology, and social history to expose how whiteness operates through the “presence of absence,” shaping contemporary inequalities while often remaining unexamined.

Professor Schwarcz is a historian and anthropologist, Senior Professor of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP), and Global Scholar at Princeton University. She is the award-winning author of Spectacle of Races; Brazil: A Biography; Black Encyclopaedia; and Images of Whiteness, and has curated major exhibitions at MASP, including Afro-Atlantic Histories and Democracy. She is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.