PhD in Social History of Africa from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), with funding from the São Paulo Research and Support Foundation (FAPESP), with the thesis "Great batuques" : identities and experiences of the urban African workers of Lourenço Marques (1890-1930)

Works with investigations about social and cultural History of African populations during the colonialism, especially from the contexts of southern Mozambique. In the doctorate, the so-called “batuques” practiced in the urban space and around Lourenço Marques - now Maputo, the capital of Mozambique - were taken as an object and as a privileged window into the world of everyday experiences of those classified by Portuguese colonial power as indigenous (“indígenas”). The research aimed to investigate the experiences and creative reinventions of those individuals by their relations with the forms of power constructed by the Portuguese colonialism. The thesis was selected by the Unicamp History department to compete for the 2017 Cappes of Theses Award.

During his postdoctoral fellow in the History Department of Unicamp, funded by FAPESP, produced a research called Nyonxani, tikweni: Music, Colonialism and Nation in Mozambique (1950-1980). As an integrated part of the postdoctoral degree, worked as a researcher in the project developed at the Research Center on Social History of Culture (CECULT), Between slavery and the burden of freedom: workers and forms of exploitation of work in a historical perspective, coordinated by Prof. Fernando Teixeira da Silva. Matheus Serva Pereira also coordinated works on the project Sources for African History in the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL-Unicamp) collection, which resulted in the exposition Mozambique: Independence and Nation at AEL.

Develops researches in the areas of Social History of Labor, African History, Mozambican History, European colonialism in Africa, urbanities, music and leisure in African contexts and postcolonial studies. Is a member of the Africa Research Group UERJ / UFRJ and the Research Group Empires, Colonialism and Postcolonial Societies (ICS-ULisboa). He is also on the editorial board of the journal Practices of History: Journal of theory, historiography and uses of the past.

Currently works as a researcher in the project “Native Colonial Archives: Microhistories and Comparisons” (PTDC / HAR-HIS / 28577/2017).