Clara Saraiva (PhD 1999) is an anthropologist, a senior researcher at Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, (ICS). She researches religion, ritual, transnationalism, migration, heritage and medical anthropology. She was a Visiting Fellow at UC Berkeley (2013), Michael Teague/FLAD Brown Visiting Professorship at Brown University and a Research Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown (2001-2002 and 2008). She was a researcher at the Institute for Scientific Tropical Research (1988-2015), and at the Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) (1998-2017), and an invited Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Nova University, Lisbon (1996-2017). She lectured at Brown University, UC Berkeley, Universidade de São Paulo, Unicamp, Pontifica Universidade de São Paulo, Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Université d'Aix-Marseille, amongst others.

She was the PI (Portugal) of the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) project HERILIGION, "The heritagization of religion and the sacralization of heritage in contemporary Europe" HERA Joint Research Programme "Uses of the Past" (Sept 2016-Feb 2020) together with the University of Copenhagen, Jagiellonian University, Meertens Institute, and University of East Anglia. She was PI of the project "The invisibility of death among immigrant populations in Portugal: vulnerabilities and transnational managements", funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). In her previous funded research projects, she addressed religion and heritage, population dynamics, transnational mobility, migration, religious pluralism and transnationalism, death conceptualizations and rituals, medical anthropology, with field research in Portugal, Brazil, the US, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa.

She has published extensively, with articles in the journals Etnográfica, Antropologia Portuguesa, Revue Europeéne des Migrations Internationales (REMI), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), African Diaspora, Revista Pós de Ciências Sociais, African Journal of Food Agriculture, Recherches Sociologiques and in a variety of edited volumes and monographs with major peer-review editors, as Brill, Berghahn, Cambriddge Scholars Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan. She is the co-editor (with Peter Jan Margry, Meertens Institute) of the Lit-Verlag series on the Ethnology of Religion.

She is the President of the Association of Portuguese Anthropology (APA), member of the World Council of Anthropological Associations Organizing Committee (WCAA board), and a board member of the WCAA Ethics Task Force. She is former vice-president of the Society for International Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF).

Selected Publications

Saraiva, C. & Dominguez, V., 2021, Anthropologists Answer Four Questions about the Pandemic, World Anthropologies, American Anthropologist. Vol 123 (2): 401-419.

Saraiva, C., 2021, Emotions and religion across the Atlantic: senses and lusophone orixás Dossiê Displaying feelings and emotions in cultural settings, org. M.C. Silva and C. Saraiva, Etnográfica, Vol 25 (2):465-492.

Saraiva, C., 2020, Our Lady of Fatima in Brazil, and Iemanjá in Portugal. Afro-Brazilian Religions across the Atlantic, Atlantic perspectives. Places, Spirits, Heritage, ed.R. Sarró, R. Blanes & M. Balkenhol, New York, Oxford, Berghahn.

Saraiva, C.,  Roussou, E. & Povedak, I. (eds), 2019, Expressions of Religion. Ethnography, Performance and the Senses, Berlin, Lit-Verlag.

Saraiva, C., 2016, Circulating spirits and dead bodies: Funerary transnationalism among immigrants from Guinea Bissau in Portugal. African Diaspora 9 (1/2):1-16.

Saraiva, C., 2016, Orixás across the Atlantic. The diaspora of Afro-Brazilian Religions in Europe The Handbook of Contemporary Brazilian Religions, ed by Bettina Schmidt & Stephen Engler, London, Brill.