Rosana Dent is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University School of Arts & Sciences-Newark in the department of History. Rosanna Dent researches at the intersection of history of science and medicine, Latin American history, Native studies, and feminist science and technology studies. Broadly, she is interested in how human interactions unfold in the context of knowledge production, and the implications of these relationships for questions of political and social justice. She has published on twentieth-century histories of human genetics and epidemiology in Brazil and is currently working on two book manuscripts, a monograph on the history of human sciences research in Xavante (Indigenous) communities in Central Brazil and a collaborative compilation and analysis of oral histories of human genetics in Brazil.
In collaboration with colleagues and members of Xavante communities in the Indigenous Territory of Pimentel Barbosa, Mato Grosso, Professor Dent is also working on a digital archive project to return historical documentation and publications produced since the 1950s to the Native communities they document.
Her work has been supported by The Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Max Planck Center for the History of Science, the Social Science Research Council, and Fulbright IIE.
Visiting Scholars
Rosana Dent
Marisa Ruiz Trejo
Marisa Ruiz Trejo is a feminist anthropologist, writer, journalist, and activist from Chiapas, Mexico. She is a full-time professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas (UNACH) and directed the Cultural Diversity Studies and Social Spaces Master's Program (2017-2019) at UNACH. Ruiz Trejo received a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Latin American Studies at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and was a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology at New York University (2014 and 2019) and the Ethnic Studies Department of California, Berkeley (2012). In 2016, she contributed to the reports on racism, genocide, and sexual violence against q'eqchi' Indigenous women in the Sepur Zarco case in Guatemala. This is the most significant legal case of sexual violence committed by the army during the genocide to be won in a domestic court in Guatemala. Marisa Ruiz Trejo was also an ILAS Edmundo O’Gorman Fellow at Columbia University. She is a professor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).
Among her recent publications are Feminist Anthropologies in Mexico: epistemologies, ethics, practices, and diverse views (co-edited with Berrio, Castañeda, Goldsmith, Salas, and Valladares) (UNAM, UAM-I, UAM-X, and Editorial Bonilla, 2020), Decolonize and depatriarchalize the Social Sciences, memory, and life in Chiapas, Central America, and the Caribbean (2020, UNACH), and Make a body pa we Uwach Ulew u b’iam América Latina (AVANCSO, Guatemala-UNACH, 2021). Currently, she works on the recovery of life and the life stories and work of women in the field of anthropology in Chiapas and Central America
Frederico Benevides
Frederico Benevides is a researcher, director and film editor. His films and installations have been exhibited at festivals such as Berlinale, Oberhausen, Fidocs, and Mostra de São Paulo.
Benevides is currently a doctoral student in Visual Arts at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (PPGAV-UFRJ), sponsored by the Institutional Internationalization Program CAPES_Print. He has a Master’s degree in Politics, Image, and Sound Analysis from Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), where he has also served as an editing professor. He participated in Harun Farocki’s “Labour in a Single Shot” workshop and was an assistant to filmmaker Agnès Varda during her stay in Fortaleza, Ceará.
For the past fifteen years he has edited and worked closely with film directors such as Adirley Queirós, Tavinho Teixeira, Yuri Firmeza, Eduardo Morotó, Janaína Marques, Adriana Botelho, Ricardo Alves Jr, Marcelo Caetano and Camila Freitas. In 2019 and 2022, he directed a series of film-essays in collaboration with philosophers such as Georges Didi-Huberman and Deborah Danowski. Recent works in collaboration with Lucas Coelho and Alexandre Veras may be viewed at www.atelierural.com.br
Benevides’s current research focuses on the notorious Brazilian Northeast São Francisco River, particularly the river’s "translation" into electric energy through recent history. In this research, he employs image and sound archives in close contact with the riverside communities that inhabit the regions of the middle and lower São Francisco.