My work as an anthropologist is the result of sustained engagement with social theory as well as colonial and post-colonial Angola. Drawing from both fieldwork and archival research, I have considered processes of subject constitution from a sociocultural, political, historical, and discursive perspective. I am especially interested in the imbrication of symbolic, imaginary, and material aspects in processes of differentiation. My publications address topics such as translation and naming practices, colonialism and post-colonialism, witchcraft and sorcery, ethnographic theory and the case study. Research methodology is a key area of concern.

Some questions I have addressed include: What is the relationship between subject constitution and the sociocultural, political, historical, and discursive contexts in which it takes place? How do subjects express themselves in language? What and how do they perform? What is the relationship between the singular and the general, the empirical and the theoretical, the object and the signifier, the language and the body? What happens in the process of naming? What does translation do?

I am currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where I develop the FCT-funded CEEC project "Naming Transformations in Portuguese and Umbundu: The Politics of Subject Constitution in Central Angola from 1846 to the Present" (contract number 2022.04991.CEECIND/CP1756/CT0005). I have been a collaborating professor in the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology of the Federal University of São Carlos (2018-2024), where I supervised M.A. dissertations, Ph.D. theses, and post-doctoral fellowships and PI in the FAPESP-funded project "Processes of constitution of subjects in African contexts: differentiations, iterations, intersectionalities" at the Federal University of São Carlos (2017-2020). I hold a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo (2013) with an internship at Columbia University (2010-2011), an M.A. in Social Anthropology from the State University of Campinas (2008) and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo (2004). I have been a postdoctoral fellow at IFK in Vienna, ICI Berlin, Free University of Berlin, London School of Economics, and Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning.

I am the author of the monographs On the Emic Gesture: Difference and Ethnography in Roy Wagner (Routledge, 2019), Os nomes dos outros: etnografia e diferença em Roy Wagner [The Names of Others: Ethnography and Difference in Roy Wagner] (Humanitas, 2015), and Deus é feiticeiro: prática e disputa nas missões católicas em Angola colonial [God is a Sorcerer: Practice and Dispute in Catholic Missions in Colonial Angola] (Annablume, 2010). I have also co-edited Stella do Patrocínio: Falatório/Chatter (ICI Berlin Press, 2025), Displacing Theory Through the Global South (ICI Berlin Press, 2024), Antropologia em trânsito [Anthropology in Transit] (Annablume, 2013), and Etnografia, etnografias: ensaios sobre a diversidade do fazer antropológico [Ethnography, Ethnographies: Essays on the Diversity of Anthropological Practice] (Annablume, 2011). My work has appeared in journals such as HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Social Analysis, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Africa, European Journal of Psychoanalysis, and RISS. I have also authored various book chapters, reviews, and commentaries, as well as translations of classical anthropological works in English (including work by Roy Wagner and Marilyn Strathern) and historical sources in Umbundu.

Activity Areas: Anthropology and History

Keywords: Social theory, Angola, colonialism, post-colonialism, processes of subject constitution

Website: www.iracemadulley.com