Roberta S. Pamplona
Hi/Olá! I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Beginning in Fall 2025, I will join Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, as an incoming assistant professor of sociological theory. My areas of specialization include feminist and critical theory, law and society, political sociology, critical criminology, and Latin American studies. I’m interested in how feminist ideas move through political contexts, how racialized ideologies influence these processes, and what these dynamics mean for activism on the ground. My work has been recently published in the journals Gender & Society and Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society.
My book project investigates the criminalization of feminicídio—the killing of women based on gendered reasons—in Brazil. Rather than seeing legal reform as a singular event or the outcome of institutional struggles, I offer a dynamic account of lawmaking that centers the intellectual and political work of feminist communities. I theorize the contradictions and dilemmas of feminist praxis concerning violence.This research has received awards from the Law & Society Association (LSA) and the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA).
I am currently a research assistant for the SSHRC Insight Grant (2021–2026), Bringing Democracy into the Law: Urban Inequalities and Struggles over Rights and Fairness in the Brazilian Justice System, coordinated by Prof. Luisa Farah Schwartzman.
I am also collaborating with my colleague Brody Trottier on a project examining contemporary strategies of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), a socialist peasant movement. Our research focuses on the movement’s growing appeal among young Brazilians living in urban centers.
Before coming to Canada to pursue my PhD, I worked as a volunteer with various grassroots organizations and as a research assistant on several projects related to violence in Brazil. I grew up as a settler in southern Brazil, moving between Palhoça (where my family is from) and Porto Alegre (where I studied and worked). I enjoy reading novels and memoirs about millennials living under capitalism, baking, biking, and doing pottery.