After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts (University of Lisbon), Maria Beatriz de Abreu Afonso finished her Master’s degree in Anthropology at NOVA University (FCSH) early 2023 with the thesis Anthropology and the Invisible, the Decolonisation of Anthropological Thought Through Poetry. During that time, while developing projects such as ‘(magna mater humanidade)’ (2023), she has been writing poetry on womanhood, dualism and multinaturalism, war and the exploitation of all natural bodies, trying to diverge from castrating and violent driven narratives. She is currently doing a PhD in Anthropology at NOVA, with the intention of rescuing imagination and ancestral ways of debate such as poetry and philosophy. Her main interest is to explore the potential of combining academic and artistic thought in order to re-envision the future, but also to intertwine different fields of study, such as Anthropology, Poetry and Philosophy as a Way of Life, to get a broader outlook on how knowledge can be made and conveyed, increasing its dispersion and furthering its impacts on the social landscape. In the context of the optional unit of the FCT Exploratory Project “Mapping Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Ancient Model, A Contemporary Approach” she is currently working on a paper titled “Spiritual exercises as a feminist act: meditations on Weil and Astell”.
Email address: mbeatrizabreuafonso@gmail.com