Dr. Ana Clara Alves de Oliveira

I am a Visual and Cultural Anthropologist, currently working as a lecturer and researcher at University College Freiburg. In addition, I am an associated researcher of the Chair for Economic, Social, and Environmental History and a member of the Environmental Humanities Network of the University of Freiburg. I coordinate the teaching project Visual Methods for a Sustainable World and  the COIL project  Digital Bridges for Global Sustainability: Freiburg―Nagoya COIL Initiative. Morever, I am committed to connecting academic research, teaching, and civil society through practice-based, visual approaches to knowledge-making.

I offer courses on environmental studies, ethnography, historical photography, and visual culture. My current research examines cultures of extractivism, focusing on the visual history of mining industry in Brazil, Germany, and Japan. I completed my doctoral studies in Cultural Anthropology in 2024, through a cotutelle agreement between the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil) and the University of Tübingen (Germany).

At the University of Freiburg, I have taught the following:

Winter Semester 2026/27

Anthropology of Food, Environment and Sustainability

Nuclear Disasters: A Global History. Project: Digital Bridges for Global Sustainability: Freiburg–Nagoya.

Sommer Semester 2026

Nature and Culture in Latin American Cinema: Film Analyses, Environmental History, and Ethnographic Documentary.

Winter Semester 2025/26

Visualizing Environmental Crises, Anthropology and Sustainability

Aesthetics of Extractivism in Latin America: Ecological Disasters, Surviving Environments, and Visual Anthropology

Sommer Semester 2025

Ethnography: Exploring Worlds Within Worlds

Winter Semester 2024/25

Visualizing Environmental Crises, Anthropology and Sustainability

Sommer Semester 2024

Ethnography, Vulnerability and Culture

Research Interests:

• Visual Anthropology
• Environmental Studies
• Extractivism Studies
• Decolonial Ecology
• Gender, Labor and Environment in Historical Photography

Articles

Alves, Ana Clara. Exhausted Lands: Discussing the Visual History of Mining Extractivism in Minas Gerais, Brazil”, Horizontes Antropológicos /Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Programa de Pós-graduação em Antropologia Social, (In preparation).

Ana Clara Alves. Promises of Development and the Afterlives of Predatory Extractivism. (In preparation)

Alves, Ana Clara. ‘Políticas do véu: discursos e contradiscursos sobre a mulher muçulmana na atualidade’. Anais do Conacir, 2016, v.1. In: http://www.conacir.com.br/p/versoes.html

Books and Chapters

Alves, Ana Clara Alves. Fotografias de harém e erotismo transnacional. Book Chapter, In: Revisitando Gênero no Oriente Médio. Ed. Telha, NEOM Collection, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, 2025. In: https://editoratelha.com.br/product/revisitando-genero-no-oriente-medio-subjetividades-de-mulheres-homens-e-queers/

Alves, Ana Clara. The Aesthetics of Desire: An Anthropological Study about Ottoman Harem Photographs. University of Tübingen Library Publisher, (December 2026). Open Access.

Films

Ana Clara Alves. Short Film: Promises of Development, submitted to Reuters Screenocean Make Film History Challenge 2025.